We like to embrace challenges at Quinta do Tedo. Some by choice - for example, converting to certified organic viticulture between 2009-2011, achieving Biosphere Certification in 2023, and currently working on Wines of Portugal’s National Reference for Sustainability Certification in the Wine Sector.
Other challenges we face by obligation - for example, adapting our viticulture techniques to ensure our vineyards produce the best ratio of quantity (not a given in Douro’s harsh climate and schist soils!) to quality fruit, and thrive for decades in light of Douro’s increasingly hotter and drier climate - a challenge historic quality wine regions around the world are facing.
Pruning is one of the most important viticulture processes by which we help our vines build resilience and produce quality fruit. It’s an art and takes experience. Essentially, we look at each vine to understand its vigor and health, and prune it accordingly to establish an equilibrium between plant, soil and climate.
Our goal? To grow vines that produce high quality fruit in Douro’s increasingly drier and hotter mediterranean climate. Three main adversaries we manage in doing so include disease, extreme sun exposure, and drought.
In some cases we revise ancient viticulture techniques - for example, grafting massal selection of traditional (and some forgotten) high acid red varieties in our Seita Nova parcel, a “new old vine” planted in a better organized and mechanizable fashion. In 8-10 years, we should have quality fruit production to produce naturally fresh and authentic Douro DOC red wines and Portos, preserving Douro’s incredible diversity of 120+ native grape varieties.
In other cases, we test different viticulture techniques - for example, Guyot pruning in our recent 2022 Bastardo and Touriga Franca plantings. This method encourages lower fruiting zones, facilitating the flow of water and nutrients less distance between leaves, fruit, trunk and roots, to produce more grapes, without jeopardizing their quality and ensuring the vine stores sufficient reserves to live many years.
In Seita Velha, our newly acquired, 80-year-old, non-mechanized traditional field blend parcel, we’re encouraging bush vine (aka goblet) training. This system provides more foliage cover to avoid sunburn, respects low yields and energy reserves for longevity, and avoids us making large cuts to healthy living old wood.
We maintain tradition with Royat (or Unilateral Cordon) pruning in a parcel of Sousão, making only small cuts to one-year old wood to minimize large open wounds for disease to enter, leading to trunk diseases like Esca.
As you can see, there’s no “one size fits all” pruning model for our beautiful mosaic of 14 ha of 0-80 year old vineyards, composed of 24+ grape varieties growing in different microclimates around Quinta do Tedo. And as we cannot predict what the future holds, we must remain on our toes and test new techniques, without forgetting those that have been fine-tuned over centuries.
Look forward to a mini video series launching next month via our Instagram and Facebook accounts recapping these pruning techniques with our Viticulture Technician Angelo Ribeiro.
~ Odile Bouchard