vineyard in July
fog

Days are short now and nights long - the frogmouths are in their fluffy winter coats.

All through July pruning continues, and slowly the rows of unpruned wines decrease and the bundles of pruned-out canes increase.

Frogmouths are small owls, living mainly on insects like mothsfrogmouth
bundles of prunings pruned vines All premium vineyards are hand-pruned.
pruned vines The severity of pruning determines the relative size of next years crop. It is measured as the number of buds left on each vine. frost on trellis
  frost on trellis  
frost on vine bark   frost on vine bark
frost on vine bark frost on vine bark frost on vine bark
unpruned vines   pruned vines

put simply: a vine pruned to 10 buds will next year produce 10 strong shoots and 20 large bunches of grapes.

The same vine pruned to 50 buds will have 50 short twigs and 100 small grapes of only a few berries.

cane and tendril  
The signs of last year's fungal attackfungal attack With hand-pruning it is possible to regulate these parameters quite closely.
Machine pruned vines usually have many buds and many small bunches. These cannot be hand-harvested, so no sorting or selecting of grapes is possible, and quality may be compromised.
thousands of tiny spiders this month spider web
Case moths mature in their silken case reinforced with the leaf stalks of last years vine leaves.
and last years abandoned bird nest, carefully tied with the hair stolen from our cow's tails.
case moth  
case moth case moth bird nest
vineyard in July
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