Wines & Vines: Vineyard Innovations

I read the March 2013, Wines & Vines and found some validation near the end of the article entitled Vineyard Innovations. My husband and I are going out on a limb (oh, bad pun) by planting a vineyard full of tall grafted vines that we had custom grafted at Mercier Vineyards, California. Cameron Hosmer and Ken Whitty of Benchmark Custom Vineyard Planting were interviewed for this article on their experiences with laser guided planters for mechanizing vineyard development. Using the laser guided system, Hosmer says that he can plant 5000 vines on a good day.
Jan Waltz whom we visited on the way to Wineries Unlimited, has contracted Hosmer's laser guided planting and confirms that "the resultant vineyard with its uniform spacing makes other mechanized work such as harvesting, spraying and pruning easier to do".
In the same article, John Duarte of Duarte Nursery is quoted as saying that one of the "coolest" new technologies is the Vibrosoiler that can prepare the vineyard by ripping the soil when it is moist to preserve the soil structure. John Duarte worked with John Crosslands of Vineyard Professional Services for a trial using the nursery’s UberVine (a 42-inch bench-grafted grapevine) with the Vibrosoiler’s plant-preparation system, which can rip and mound a row while also incorporating soil adjustments. Crossland confirmed that the UberVines demonstrated a “significant amount of growth” after being planted, and he believes they yielded up to a 3-ton crop during their second leaf.¹
While we are not looking to get a crop during our second leaf, it helps to know that there is some excitement out there about the uber/tall grafted vines being a vineyard innovation.
References:
1. Andrew Adams, Wines & Vines, Mechanizing Vineyard Development, March 2013.