CleverRoot

Great pioneers, explorers and trailblazers have a few traits in common: cour- age, passion, unbounded curiosity and a belief that anything is possible. They also share a spirit of experimentation. Consider the order of Cistercian monks who established a monastery and managed vineyard plantings in Burgundy in the 12th century. For more than 400 years, these monks experimented in their vineyards, constantly refining their plantings, farming methods and winemaking techniques, and then making written notes of their findings. Their goal: make delicious wines. Through their experiments, they concluded that understanding what they had in their vineyards could lead them to their goal. Their work and experiments are still referenced today—and the methods and techniques they developed continue to produce some of the most extraordinary wines in the world. The spirit of experimentation exemplified by those Cistercian monks is alive and well today in vineyards and wineries around the world, including our Terlato family–owned wineries and vineyards in Califor- nia. Here are just a few examples of how the spirit of experimentation is manifested in our everyday practices. A look between rows at the healthy soil thriving in the Terlato vineyards in California. s u m m e r 2 0 1 7 | 4 5 PRUNING PRACTICES Pruning has historically been perceived as a task to be carried out quickly and efficiently, during the vines' dormant period. However, there is a company of master pruners in Italy's Friuli region called Simonit & Sirch that's been researching and experi- menting with pruning for 25 years. Through those years of experi- mentation, Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch have developed a logical, thoughtful pruning technique that promotes the vines' vitality, sap flow, homogeneity and, ultimately, longevity. They dis- covered that every pruning cut made to a vine creates a wound on both the outside and inside of the plant—if you take a plant out of the ground and slice it down the middle, the internal effects of a poorly placed pruning cut becomes immediately evident. My brother, Bill, met Marco and Pierpaolo during a trip to Friuli. He was tasting Pinot Grigios in the area, and when he tasted the wines from Marco and Pierpaolo's vineyards, he found them to be seamless, balanced and of the highest quality. Further discussions clarified that the quality of their fruit (and, by extension, their wines) was directly connected to the location and composition of their vineyards, and their farming techniques—including pruning. In our vineyards, the goal is to nurture our vines to old age and extraordinary health, which then positions us to produce wines of the highest quality—so today, we are using the Simonit & Sirch pruning technique. After just two years, the results have been positive and promising.

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