By LINCOLN SILIAKUS
In my last piece, I described budding winemakers Carla Giovanell and Julie Galet at work trimming the vines. The other day I saw my neighbour Serge Ollivier down there, too, so wandered over to see how it is done.
He was about to trim this bit. There are quite a few stems as he decided to leave more on last year and sell the grapes for use in a simple Côtes du Rhone rather that a Sablet. As he wants to sell them for Sablet this year, he is cutting them tighter, to reduce the yield.
He first cut off the middle stem with its stump of dead wood from the previous year:
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The second cut was on the stem he is keeping just above the second bud. In this way, 2 stems will grow from the stump of that one:
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He will cut off the stem below it at the end.
Finally, he cut the other stems off at the branch, so that they would not sprout.
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Voilà!
Now, all we need is a bit more good weather and we’ll see those branches budding.