Pruning for lower yields is one of the hallmarks of quality
As legend has it, it all
began in 345 A.D. with Saint Martin (one of the Catholic Church’s three patron Saints
of grape growers and winemakers) who lived in the Loire Valley of France. Saint Martin wasn’t just a Saint. He was a winemaker involved in the trenches
making wine. A mistake made on Saint
Martin’s watch, however, altered the path of making quality wines.
Saint Martin rode on his
donkey to the fields located not far from his monastery where he and his
brothern monks grew grapes for wine. As
was common during this period all over Europe, monks were the winemakers and
the monasteries counted on sales of their wines to fill the church’s coffers. It was
early September and the grapes were almost ready for picking. He
tied up his donkey securely and then proceeded to inspect the rows of vines and
the readiness of the grapes.
Hours later when Saint Martin
returned, he found much to his horror that his tethered donkey not only had
eaten all the fruit off of every vine that the animal could reach, but he had
chewed several vines right down to their trunks. Saint Martin rode back to the monastery and
shared the unfortunate news with his brothers.
Many thought the vines would die.
None of them dreamed what would transpire the following year.
As the monastery’s vineyards
began to bud with new growth, a strange phenomena happened to the rows that had
been devastated by the donkey. These
vines were growing far better than any others in the vineyard! By the end of summer, the fruit on these once
desecrated vines was not only the largest, but the best tasting in the
vineyard. From this point on, the monastery began “pruning” their vines after
the harvest. The lesson was not lost on
the monks---as centuries passed, pruning has become a mandated part of every
grape grower’s routine.
Pruning
grape vines follows the philosophy of quality over quantity, similar to that of
thinning a fruit tree. The idea is that if one reduces the number of fruit that
a plant must grow, the plant will put more energy into developing each
remaining fruit into higher quality. In
contrast, unpruned wild vines typically produce smaller grapes that are sour in
flavor.
As
in many things in life, mistakes have created some of the biggest
opportunities. Wine, itself, is thought to have been created by grapes that
were mistakingly left for weeks unattended.
So was Roquefort cheese which was supposedly invented when a shepherd in
France left his uneaten lunch in a cave and returned a month later to find it
filled with blue mold. As a wine lover,
I want to go on record to say “merci
beaucoup” to that donkey of Saint Martin’s.
Bravo!
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