IT'S PRUNING TIME....

Pruning is the biggest single task each year at Hafner Vineyard.

Many of our 76,000 grapevines were above head-high in November when pruning began.

We use our mechanical harvester first, to cut away the longest, toughest canes. The harvester’s grape-picking apparatus is replaced by a set of steel blades for this rugged pruning.

Then our eight-man vineyard crew begins its careful, skilled hand-pruning of all 76,000 vines. Several of the crew have worked fulltime at Hafner Vineyard for over 30 years. They will finish pruning in late March…with luck and frequent clear skies.

Top priority for the men is to prune away most of the buds on each vine. Instead of many dozen buds on each vine, only 36 or fewer will be left to produce about five tons of grapes per acre.

If not pruned, the buds would produce many bunches of grapes weak in flavor and low in sugar. Wines made from those grapes would be thin and disappointing.

As soon as a vine is pruned, the pruning cuts are painted to prevent diseases from entering the vine and killing it. (Palo Alto on Agustin’s red hat refers to the crew’s hometown in Mexico’s Michoacán state.)

The cuttings are piled in every other row where they are chopped into small pieces by a mower. Sun and rain compost the cuttings to return the prunings’ nutrients to the soil where they will aid the grapevines’ growth.

When the pruning is finished and Spring’s sunshine warms, the buds will come to life as they spread their canopy of new leaves. Then the dark vineyard colors will disappear in a blaze of bright green young growth. The growing season will have begun.