How to prune a grapevine

"Winter's the time to prune many deciduous plants, including grapes and today we're going to be shown how to prune grapes by a master - my dad - Roberto Carnevale" Tino says.

Dad's from the Lucania region of Italy. It's a great place, but he came to Tassie for a better life in the late 50's where he met and he married mum. He's always wanted land and eventually fulfilled that dream on the outskirts of Hobart at Brighton."

Roberto has three varieties - Chardonnay, Pinot and Cabernet. They are all French varieties because they cope better than other varieties in the Tasmanian climate. Many of the other varieties don't ripen.

Pruning them is simple and Roberto prunes all grapes the same way, even table grape varieties. Ideally the finished vine should look like a letter 'T'. This is how it's done:

Pick the three healthiest canes on your vine and remove all other canes back to the 'trunk' of the vine
With the first of the three canes, count the spurs up to ten and prune the rest off
Tie the cane along the training wire
Do exactly the same with another cane, tying to the wire in the opposite direction. (The other cane is the fallback cane in case one of the canes snaps when it is tied to the wire)
If both canes have been successfully pruned and tied to the training wires, then cut the spare cane off
Note: One of the beauties of pruning a grape vine is it doesn't have to be done all in one go, it just has to be done before the sap starts rising in spring.

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