Great Quality, Low Yields

- Piyush Gadkari

When I initially set out to compile a harvest report for India’s top wineries, I didn’t know what to expect. With the shocking reports that were coming out of France – of spring frosts destroying swathes of vineyards across Chablis, Champagne, the Loire valley and Bordeaux – I wasn’t keen on being the harbinger of more bad news. As I spoke to producer after producer, though, I came away instead with heartening reports of a prolonged and cool growing season that yielded grapes of optimum quality. This excellent news was tempered by most producers also reporting lower yields, caused almost entirely by the drought-like conditions that persisted last summer.

In the months after the harvest, a producer will spend a few weeks pruning his vineyards to prepare it for the following season. Pruning takes place in two phases. In the first phase, all of the dead wood and overgrown foliage are cut away. This process reinvigorates the vine, causing it to build new wood. In the second phase (which takes place a few months later), most of the newly grown wood is pared back, leaving just the hardiest specimens to bear on next year’s crop. Producers in India usually time their prunings to occur on either side of the monsoons.

In Maharashtra, the water stress on the vines was so great at the time of the first pruning, that most producers were unable to prune all of their vines. Fratelli, for instance, chose to delay some of its pruning till the first rains, while Sula left entire vineyards fallow till the following season. Most producers came into the new season expecting yields to be lower than usual.