August 2000
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Planting The planting started at the beginning of August. First Manie and Redvers went down to the nursery to pick up the new vines. There were 12,500 of them. Just small, thin brown sticks 60-70cm long with no leaves. Each stick or stok in Afrikaans (stokki is the affectionate name for them) is the result of the skillful grafting of the scion onto the rootstock.
The scion is the fruiting vine that grows
the leaves and fruit of the particular variety (cultivar) that the grower wants e.g.
Cabernet Sauvignon. The rootstock is the bit that goes in the ground and
produces the roots. The reason for joining them together is to The point is to select the roots of your vines based on their resistance to phylloxera and nematodes, their tolerance to lime, to dry conditions, to salt etc and for their vigour or lack of it. There will be a type of rootstock suitable for the conditions in each vineyard and even from block to block of the same vineyard. The rootstock that we had chosen was 99 Richter and 110 Richter.
All in all these rootstocks are ideal for warm infertile areas and Mediterranean climates such as ours. Each one of our 12,500 vines is handmade. A V is cut in the rootstock and a point is made on the vine. The two are fitted together, stapled and laid in a warm damp box. Remarkably enough the two grow together forming a callus around the joint. When this is fully formed the new vine is encouraged to root and grown for a year in the nursery before being released into the wider world to be planted in a vineyard. We hired a specialized team to do the planting as we wanted our new arrivals bedded in as soon as possible. The team worked solidly from 9 to 5 for a week, 30 guys in ten teams of 3 working down the rows. Each stokki was placed half in the ground and half out (root downwards!), each 1.2m apart.
The planting team was drawn from the town and was led by an ex farm manager. We were planting quite late in the season. This team had already planted 4 or 5 farms so they were experienced and slick. Now we have 4 hectares of small vines that need nurturing and protecting for ever (or at least 50 or so years before they are uprooted). Half of them are Shiraz and half Cabernet Sauvignon. It will not be until 2003 when we will know what sort of fruit these guys will bear us and another 2 years beyond that before we can introduce our wine to the drinking public.
We had a visit from T J Poon, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Surrey (Pirbright). He was visiting us for a holiday and was quick to point a flaw in the First Law of Sloperand (see May 2000). On a perfectly flat surface it is impossible to store any water without an enclosing wall and so to store an infinite amount of water would require an infinitely long circular wall, thus infinite cost. We are grateful to Professor Poon for pointing this out. Copyright © 2000 Tulbagh Solutions. All rights reserved.
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