“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves,” said Gandhi.
At Tinazzi, we know full well how our real wealth consists in the gestures and traditions our collaborators who take care of the vines day after day have been handing down for decades.
Vines need many precise operations to thrive and flourish and we work hard in the vineyards every season to obtain the best grapes.
In summer, and specifically during these hot July days, we are finishing off a very important delicate operation – the manual thinning of the bunches. Part of the bunches are sacrificed to leave only a certain number of them on the plants in order to balance grape production. In August, we will start harvesting Primitivo followed by all the other grapes in Puglia, Tuscany and the Veneto probably until mid or late-October.
In autumn, between November and December, vine leaves lose their chlorophyll and fall to the ground so plants can enter their winter rest phase. It is the moment to earth up the vines to protect their base from the cold.
In January and February, we perform winter pruning. All our vineyards are Guyot-trained.
In winter, shoots are bare as the vines have lost all their leaves, so pruning is easier. We cut the shoots that have just produced and identify those that will produce in the new year.
And here comes spring: in March, vines sprout so we start with summer pruning operations on producing plants and we fertilize the soil where necessary. When pruning is over, we tie the shoots to guide their growth.
Now summer is back… work in a vineyard never ends!