Wines & Vines

March 2015 Wines&Vines 63 wine east grapegrowing for growers to get caught in a vi- cious cycle of hedging and leaf re- m o v a l t o a d d r e s s t h e v i n e s ' vegetative growth response. A potential new canopy-man- agement tool was brought to our attention at the 2008 meeting of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture-Eastern Section. Olivier Humbrecht from Domaine Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace, France, discussed a technique of canopy management that he referred to as "palissage," where long shoot tips that would normally be hedged are tucked horizontally along the top of the canopy. Humbrecht reported benefits of palissage on Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris to include ear- lier cessation of shoot growth during the grow- ing season and reduced/eliminated need for leaf removal in the fruiting zone due to fewer laterals. Real-life application Thom Bechtold, vineyard manager at King Ferry Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York, has been experimenting with the practice since 2009. Bechtold reports that the benefits of palissage as a replacement for hedging in- clude long-term reduction in vine size. I've also used the technique for three growing seasons on vigorous Cabernet Franc and Riesling in the Cornell vineyards and found it to be a poten- tially viable practice. In 2013, former Cornell viticulture and enology student Jason Hopwood conducted a small preliminary experiment with Pinot Gris in Sudlersville, Md. A randomized complete block design with four replications and two treatments (palissage and hedging) was estab- lished. Vines were planted in 2008, trained to double Guyot and cane pruned. Experimental treatments were performed July 22, 2013. Palissage was executed by wrapping vertical shoots along the top catch wire, located ap- proximately 1 meter above the fruiting wire. Manual hedging was performed via use of hedging shears, leaving about 0.3 meters of growth above the top catch wire. Vigorous noiret vines on a vertically shoot posi- tioned canopy have shoots growing over the top catch wire and down to the ground, shading the fruiting zone. This Pinot Gris vine has been palissaged, and its shoot tips wrap around top wire. PHoTos: JUsTinE VanDEn HEUVEL (ToP) anD Jason HoPWooD (BoTTom) 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 SPECIALTY PAPERS • DIGITAL PRINTING • FLEXO PRINTING • HOT FOIL COLD FOIL • SCREEN PRINTING • EMBOSSING • VARIABLE DATA

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