How to Plant Grapes for Wine Making

The thoughts of a wine lover with a few acres out back inevitably turn to starting a small vineyard and making some wine at home. It is arguable that viticulture (grape science, essentially) is the most demanding part of the process, and good viticulture starts with a well-thought-out and sound planting of grape stock.

Things You'll Need

• Gardening trowel Soil testing kit (optional, but recommended) Shovel Grape stock Backhoe Sledgehammer Stakes Buck knife Wire Pruning Tool

Instructions

Choosing a Site

1. Take a look at your soil, and think about digging up some samples with a trowel and getting it tested before planting. Good wine grapes will grow better if the varietal is matched to your local conditions. One important soil characteristic for grapes is a slight alkalinity. Avoid red clay or dirt, as this produces cloudy grapes that are inferior for wine making.

2. Consider the drainage. A vineyard should be placed in a well-drained location. The slope of a hill is ideal. The bottomland is not, and anywhere you see puddles forming when it rains should be rejected.

3. Measure soil depth. This can be done by digging a few sample holes with a shovel in the area where you intend to plant. You need at least 30 inches throughout the vineyard.

4. Choose a site where frost is minimized. This is another reason to avoid bottomland, as it is invariably colder and more likely to produce frost.

The Planting Process

1. 

   Rent a backhoe the autumn before planting and dig up trenches for planting the vine rows. The trenches need to be about 3 feet wide and 30 inches deep, with the rows spaced 8 to 12 feet apart. This is an enormous amount of work for all but the smallest of vineyards, so do rent some equipment before starting work.

2. Put the dirt back in the trenches. If you still have the backhoe, do this with the loader on the front, if there is one. Otherwise, use a shovel.

3. Set up the posts for a trellis while waiting for the planting season. A simple trellis can be erected by cutting notches for the wires with a buck knife into a group of stakes, and then driving them into place with a few hard taps from the sledgehammer. One stake should be on the end of every row with an additional stake placed down the proposed vine row every 5 feet. That is enough for a well-pruned grape vine.

4. 

   Start planting as soon as the last frost of early spring has passed. Begin this by trimming back the roots on the grape stock to about 8 inches with a pruning tool.

5. Shovel out a hole for the grape stock at the start of each vine row. It should be wide enough for the grape stock, but about a couple of inches deeper (or roughly 10 inches).

6. Use the trowel to create a mound of dirt that will fill in the space underneath the grape stock's roots, which fan out and create a hollow in the center. Place the grape stock on top of this mound.

7. Fill in the rest of the hole with the shovel.

8. Repeat Steps 5 through 7 for every grape stock, keeping each one separated by roughly 6 to 8 feet.

Tips & Warnings

• Amateur viticulturists are very strongly discouraged from growing vines from seeds. It is a recipe for failure, and even many experienced hands at growing grapes do not attempt it.

References

• WVU: Local Viticulture
• From Vines to Wines, Jeff Cox; 1999