“There’s a sucker born every minute.” That phrase has never been more true that spring time in the vineyard. P.T. Barnum must have been a grape grower. The sun is shining, the days are getting longer, the temperatures have warmed to between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit and with the warm days and cool nights the vines are pushing out shoots like mad. Soon it’s going to be time to sucker the vines.
Suckering is the practice of removing the unwanted shoots that sprout from the vines. This isn’t just done for aesthetics, but to improve the quality of the wine grape fruit. These excess shoots pull water, energy and nutrients away from the fruit as it develops. Suckering along with shoot thinning and leaf pulling later in the season helps keep the canopy manageable allowing for air flow, some sunlight, and access to the fruit. On vertical cordon or head-trained vines like ours, suckering is imperative otherwise the vines would end up being more like dense bushes.
Suckering is typically done by hand and as long as it’s done before the shoots get too long they as easy to pull off by hand without requiring clippers. If you wait too long the shoots toughen up and can no longer be easily rubbed or snapped off. Once that is the case it takes a lot more time and effort.
When we sucker the vines we want to remove all of the shoots except for the two original buds that we pruned to during pruning season. Those two shoots will grow and become fruiting canes. The only time we keep shoots other than the two original buds is if one of the spur arms has died and we’re looking to start a new spur. The other exception in Clos du Lac is the Petit Verdot on Champagne court. We try not to sucker those vines until after the delta breeze and spring windstorms have passed and once the shoot become much stronger. What we found over the years is that is we sucker those vines a strong spring windstorm inevitably blows through and the Petit Verdot shoots are much more fragile than our other vines – one good storm can decimate the young shoots and set the vines all the way back to needing to sprout new buds.
