Winter Pruning

We have now entered the major pruning season at Domaine Jones.  Pruning will last until March and here I must admit to getting a little help from my friends.  It has now become a family tradition that after the over indulgence of the festive period the Jones family get out in the vineyards and burn off calories with some energetic top pruning.

With invaluable help from Mum and Dad and my Uncle Ed we snipped our way through over 12 000 vines.  It took us the best part of 2 weeks but the fresh air, breathtaking views and frugal picnics gave us a good, healthy start to 2013.

Now the professional pruning needs to begin and I am very happy to leave this to the professionals and get on with blending the 2012s in the Vatican Wine Cellar.

Will I ever......

This post is to show you that sometimes the romantic images of owning a vineyard in the south of France just fly out of the fenêtre. 

Temperatures have been below zero for the past week and the wind has been howling a gale at over 90 miles an hour.  The wind chill factor is such that I can't stay in the vineyard for more than 10 minutes at a time before my fingers freeze off.  

But my man is out there pruning the 100 year old vines in La Petite Vigne.  He prunes a row and then shelters in the hedgerow amongst the boxwood and wild rosemary.  He is wearing three pairs of trousers, two pairs of socks and two hats.  I am sitting by the fire warming my toes thinking will I ever be a true vigneronne?

Arctic conditions in La Petite Vigne

Taking shelter in the hedge

The art of slow pruning

The french word for pruning is la taille and that is what I have been doing for the last month - la taille. Pruning takes up a large amount of a wine growers life as each vine has to be individually sculpted.  I only have a couple of very small vineyards but even so it takes an experienced pruner over 2 months to prune them all.  You can imagine if I were to try and do it all myself - it would be the harvest by the time I finished.  So when I say I have been pruning what I really mean is that I have been helping in the vineyards whilst the professionals get on with it.  But don't think that I have been shirking the hard work.  Each vineyard needs to be pre pruned to take off the long canes, the canes need to be burned and then once the vines have been pruned those on wires need to be attached to the wires.

Not quite ready to enter the local pruning competition

This is the first year though that I become fascinated by the art of pruning.  The grower sculpts each vine to make sure that next years crop is evenly distributed on the vine, that there isn't too much of it or too little.  I have the basic principles in my head but each vine takes me about ten minutes whilst a pro would do it in one.

So for this year, apart from a couple of unfortunate vines, I have contented myself with the pre and post pruning jobs.

I have absolutely loved it - especially as I download novels and drift off into my little world whilst I snip away.

Katie Scissor Hands

The Big Prune Part II

We like a challenge in the Jones' family.  So barely had the oysters and dinde had time to go down, and we were back out secateurs at the ready in the Domaine Jones vineyard in Maury.  2.7 hectares, 8000 vines all needing a short back and sides before News Years Day.

Dad, feeling the pressure

Mum, a rayon of sunshine

The first day the sun shone and wasn't it lovely to be out in the great outdoors?  By the 5th day we had had wind, rain and rainbows but the moral never dipped.  We were chased from the vineyard by mosquitos, saw the flight of the starlings and got smoke in our eyes.  But we did it!  

We have started as we mean to go on - bring on 2012.

Katie, look no secateurs!

Christmas pruning

Yum, yum, yum Christmas was delicious but too much chocolate, cakes and Christmas pudding.  Now it's the great Christmas detox - I have 8000 vines that need top pruning at Maury so secateurs in hand and wind in hair this is the best way to get ready for the New Year.  

Woolly hatted Katie

Twigs and bonfires and lots of fresh air.

Pruning en famille

So what do you do when you've got 7000 vines left to prune and not enough time to do it?  Well, Mum and Dad were looking for a bit of physical exercise after the Christmas celebrations and fed up with the snow in Ashby de la Zouch they didn't take much persuading to get on the plane, swap the snow for the sun, and come and give a very welcome hand at Domaine Jones.

Quick lesson in pruning

and off we go

And as they started snipping the long vine shoots I got on with clearing up the vineyard.   The bareness of the vineyard makes it easy to see and pick up the cuttings and bits of old vine but is was also very easy to see the damage that the torrential rain in October had done to the soil. Large gashes, that made me go ouch, cut across the vineyard exposing vine roots and layers of the black slate soils.  We stuck a superficial plaster on it by putting cuttings and stones in the trenches but a major stone wall building operation is needed to permanently sort out the problem.

Mother Jones making smoke signals

Five, six pick up sticks

My little vine bonfire

Naked vines and full tummies

Naked vines in Maury

The sun came out and so did I!  Time to get on with the pruning at Domaine Jones vineyard in Maury. There are no leaves left anywhere to be seen and I just have 8000 vines to go, so I have given up on making fagots and need to get a move on. 

Whilst I am pruning I think a lot about food in general and in particular the delicious meal we had at Les Rochons in Paris last weekend.  I had a black pudding tart with confit d'onions and ending up feeling like the man in my photo.  It is a lovely cosy little restaurant just behind Notre Dame and the food is generous, traditional french cooking.

Prunes and Fagots

And finally the perfect day for pruning has arrived along with my friend Emma from London so no more excuses and it was time to get out there and get the job done.  Much to the amusement of Jean Marc I decided that this year I would like to bundle up the clippings and take them home as firewood.  This used to be a common occurrence in the village with the ladies tying up the vine shoots into perfectly proportioned bundles called fagots. The fagots were then used the following summer on the barbecue and would impart a particularly delicious flavour to the meat.  Once families had enough fagots the surplus would be sold to the baker in the village to be used for the bread oven.

Today the tradition of fagots had almost died out as tractors pulling shredders do the job much more efficiently.  Making the perfect fagot is quite a task and previously was the object of much pride as fagots would be stacked up in front of houses in full view of the neighbours.  Jean Marc said our fagots were 'pas mal' but more of a bouffanelle than a fagot.  This is the local word for a small fagot and I think that mine will be put in a discrete corner of the garden.