“ÉTABLIR” NEW VINES: HOW IT IS DONE
By LINCOLN SILIAKUS
(Note: as you can see from the soil, this post was written last winter. After a rainy Spring, the vines are prolific this year)
I was driving up the little road that leads to my house in Sablet the other afternoon and saw a fellow working in the vines, so I stopped for a short yarn.
Now that he has finished the winter pruning, the time has come for Rashid Abaiba to “establish” some new wines.
The term établir covers all you have to do to get young wines settled into their new lives.
I’d seen them planting the pencil-sized grenache vines last summer and had wondered why they chose to do it in that heat. The plants seem to have survived, though, and Rashid is now training them up to the low horizontal wire about 50cm off the ground.