Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/754815
26 WINES&VINES December 2016 W ine grape growing and w i n e m a k i n g a r e e x - tremely competitive busi- nesses, which creates an atmosphere for constant e x pe r ime n t a t io n an d change by practitioners and companies that cater to their needs. A relatively new type of wine grape planting stock, often referred to as "big vines," is having a significant impact on how some growers are establishing new vine- yards in California. Duarte Nursery is leading the charge in this new type of planting stock. I recently spoke with John Duarte, president of Duarte Nursery, about his history with this type of planting stock and his impressions of its impact on vineyard establishment and replanting vines. Several years ago D u a r t e N u r s e r y ' s sales representative for California's North Coast was traveling in Germany and no- t i c e d s o m e g r o w e r s u s i n g b i g vines for planting stock. A big vine is 3 feet of wine grape rootstock with the scion grafted at the top. In 2007 Duarte Nursery produced between 200 and 300 of them to take out to trade shows. The initial thought was they would be most attractive for use as replants. However, when they did some cost projections of establishing a new vineyard with these big vines, they realized there was real savings to be made over use of traditional bare root or green potted planting stock. Some growers tried them, and sales have grown tremen- dously since then. Duarte trademarked the name Ubervines and has been selling more than 1 million per year. More than half of Duarte's revenue from grapevine sales now comes from Ubervines. In talking to growers with experience in California's northern interior, Central Coast and North Coast regions, big vines offer at least three advantages. The first is big vines occupy the trellis and produce a full crop much faster than traditional planting stock. The most common planting season for big vines is May to July, although some vineyards have been planted after harvest. In all cases the vines fully occupied the trellis by the end of the second year and were producing be- tween 2 tons and 4 tons of crop. This was true for both bilateral and quadrilateral trellis sys- tems. Close to a full crop can be expected in the third year from planting. This means a grower gets an economic return on the invest- ment of vineyard establishment one to two years sooner than when using traditional planting stock. In mid-September I visited a third-leaf Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard near Lodi, Calif., that had been established with Ubervines. It had been thinned twice and yet was still going to yield about 8 tons per acre. A third-leaf Petite Sirah block in the same vineyard also established with Ubervines would have yielded about 16 tons if no thin- ning were done. It will likely yield between 6 tons and 8 tons after two thinnings. A second advantage to big vines is in labor savings. Since the rootstock is almost 3 feet of the planting stock, the entire length of it is disbudded by machine in the nursery, eliminat- ing the need for suckering once the vines have been planted. Since the scion is at the level of the training wire, once planted the vines can be left to grow all season without any need for in-season training. Training can then be done during winter pruning. They can be left to grow during the second growing season as well and trained again the second winter. One grower estimated they needed only about half the staff Vineyard View n CLIFF OHMART Big Vines Disrupting Vineyard Establishment in California Big vines, 3 feet of rootstock with the scion grafted at the top, have become a popular seller at nurseries since being introduced in 2007.