It takes 506,500 of these Every Year!

Over half a million of anything is a significant number to us. What is so significant about that number? This number represents the number of pruning cuts that need to be made in the next 6 weeks on the vines at Parallel 44 and Door 44 in order to set up our vines for the growing season.

Here is the math: 10,130 vines times 50 pruning decisions and cuts per vine equals 506,500 pruning cuts. Most people assume that the decisions made by a wine grower in summer and fall are the most critical decisions for a wine grower. However, as we celebrate our 20th year, we know for a fact that pruning is the most critical decision for the health and balance of the vine and for the quality of the grapes and hence the quality of the wine.

Steve likes to refer to this as ‘vine sculpting’ because in essence, one must assess last year’s growth of each vine in order to determine how much fruiting wood needs to be removed. Each vine is like a child. They have different growth patterns based on each variety of grapes and based on the soils each vine grows in. At Parallel 44, we have glacial till soils which are variable in their fertility, and so there is variability both between the varieties and often within a particular row.

If we did not prune the vines, each vine would produce over 600 clusters. So, while the vines would be beautiful, the vine could not adequately ripen the grapes. On average each vine is kept to around 40 clusters each so that means over 90% of last year’s growth needs to be cut away so the remaining 20 shoots give us 40 clusters of grapes which can be turned into around 4 bottles of wine per vine.

The first few years were a bit scary because when you finish pruning a vine, it looks like you may have killed it. But once bud break happens in mid to late May it is amazing to see how green the vineyard becomes. You can almost see the vineyard change its appearance on a daily basis from May through June.

We invite you to come visit the vineyards at Parallel 44 and Door 44 as the growing season progresses. You are free to walk the vineyard and see for yourself how our wine is developing on the vine.

We have seen this magic unfold every year for the last 20 years and it continues to fascinate us every year.

We will be doing our best in the next two months to set our vineyards up for possibly the best vintage yet. We love this journey. Hope to see you soon!