Bordeaux: Viticulture

With their neat, low rows of densely planted, guyot-trained, low-vigour vines, Bordeaux’s vineyards are some of the world’s most recognizable. Vine trimming is a perennial activity, and vine density in less glorious vineyards averages between 5,000 and 6,000 vines per ha, although it is often as high as 10,000 vines per ha/4,000 per acre in the Médoc.

fungal diseases thrive in Bordeaux’s damp climate, and frequent spraying is a fact of life here. (This may explain why Bordeaux has been slow to embrace organic viticulture.) The incidence of eutypa dieback became a serious preoccupation in the 1980s. botrytis bunch rot is one of the most common hazards, although in sweet wine districts it is encouraged in its benevolent form as noble rot. Fertilizers (including manure from specially reared herds at some top properties) and pesticides have played their part in increasing yields. crop thinning and selective leaf plucking during the growing season has been widely employed since the late 1980s—although vignerons are increasingly aware of the hazards of sunburn.