Chambourcin Grape Growing Techniques

kert says...
Grapes generally fruit at one level only so it's conventional to have furcation at one level only . I will need to look up whether chambourcin is cane or spur pruned ;Ive yet to need a prune.

Richard says...
John Mc the video is good very helpful. Good brief insight. Thanks.

Kert thanks so best to train along one wire and perhaps a few support wires above.

So I should prune the plants I have put back in to one main trunk when they drop all there leaves or sort them now?

I have planted my vines a distance of 2m between the plants. Noticed on the video they look probably a metre apart. Any best practise for plant spacing?

Jason says...
I was working in a high class vineyard for a few years, there's heaps of different ways they are pruned commercially. But you can prune them to a double wire with 4 canes/4 spurs if you want it just makes the job more complex and take longer. Or you can prune them with wires opposite each other with a Y shaped double trunked vine and 2 canes off each end of it for a total of 4.

I guess that it doesn't matter how long it takes if you only have a few to do but with 100,000 vines to prune, you always want it over as quickly as possible so most of them are setup as a simple double cane or normal spurs :0. We used to do one fancy plot of 4 armed spurs, those were my favourite looking vines, very stylish when you have really old twisted vines pruned like that.

Some varieties prefer one pruning method over the other (cane or spur) but you seem to be able to get away with either on most varieties, we use to do 50% cane 50% spur with Pinot but it was slowly going towards being 100% spur since it's easier to cut them with machinery then.

I don't know if anyone cares about Wine grapes, but I discovered over the years that Chardonnay is the best "wine grape" for eating fresh :P, if I was a drinker I'm pretty sure that would be my flavour. It's really sharp grown down here, not very sweet but perhaps better than being sweet :0 I would choose it for eating over most table grapes.

I'm not into growing grapes myself but I would spur prune everything if I was, it's just much easier and better looking.

Also Richard, 2 meter spacing is fine. We use to have the canes/arms about a meter in each direction so I'd say they were on 2 meter spacing

Jason says...
Yep as I understand it cane pruning gives more grapes most of the time even on varieties that can do both but the extra couple of bunches aren't usually worth the extra labour in a commercial vineyard, often you get too many grapes as it is and have to thin them.

Pretty sure we use to prune to 3 nodes on the spurs. With electric pruners it would only take a few seconds to prune each vine with spurs. Cane pruning takes slightly longer for a few reasons, it's harder to pull the old stuff off the wires, you need to think for a moment about the best way to re-cut the vine each year and you need 1 extra person to follow along and tie canes for each couple pruners. It's a really big job for 16?ish people, in pretty extreme conditions, Often you start in the dark at below 0c with ice hanging off the wires in the mornings :S. By the time you've almost done all 100,000 vines you're racing against the sap flowing and buds breaking and you've been there for months. Then you spend the next 3 months walking 25-30km each day lifting the vines and wires up to higher notches on the posts as they grow. Wine would probably taste a whole lot better if everyone knew what a pain it was to make :P.

There's just something awesome about an old spur pruned vine though, I wouldn't mind growing a couple at some stage just for looks :)

kert says...
Yes, prune ;it is not hard and if you have a rambling ,disorderly vine it is difficult to place a net over it.

Jo says...
Hi Richard,
I've just got some Chambourcin vines as well and found this post really helpful. Just wondering how big your plants were before you started pruning them. Mine are probably about 50-60cm in height with about 4 shoots on each. I'm wondering if it's too young to start pruning?

Any advice greatly appreciated.