ZABIBU

The vineyard was looking unusually lush for this time of year as we had more rainfall than normal this year. Infact some of the vines had insufficient wood on the canes to be pruned- this was particularly so for the Chardonnay. I think we won’t have much of a crop of Chardonnay this next season as a result.

The Pinot Noir however was in good shape and we were able to take a good number of cuttings from them to fill in the holes where the baby pinot vines have not worked.  There was a bit of powdery mildew on the vine leaves this time which is inevitable as we do not follow such a rigourous control program when there is now fruit on the vines as it is too costly. We do however remove all the leaves and stems from the vineyard and dispose of them so as not to contaminate the new growth with spores. Although obviously we cant get it all, we find that this helps us a little.

As always seems to happen we get to pruning one of the lines half way down the slope and the clouds build up. We had 10mm of rain and the next day a further 5mm. Just enough to wet the dust and the grass and get us through to the short rains which should be here by November, in time for our bud break and spring time.

Once we prune the vines we paint the buds with DORMEX. Muia here is well protected as its quite toxic they say.