A Cut Above: Leelanau Winery Hopes to Boost Consistency, Productivity with New Pruning Technique

Old vines, new thinking.

As northern Michigan's wine industry continues to find ways to produce a better product in the region’s harsh and variable climate, one winery is trying a pruning technique expected to extend longevity, production and grape quality on vines.

Pruning, generally carried out in the colder months, allows vineyard managers to control growth, maximize fruit quality and maintain vine health by selectively removing parts of the plant structure. It’s a vital part of all fruit growing operations.  

Shady Lane Cellars is working with an international pruning consultant on its roughly 50 acres of grapes near Suttons Bay. The overall goal, vineyard manager Andy Fles tells The Ticker, is to prune the vines in such a way to encourage their health and productivity in colder temperatures.

The technique, variously called sap flow, gentle or permanent structure pruning, might help the vines live longer and perform better in old age in an area where cold ends up stressing or killing plenty of vines.

“We're trying to maximize vine performance so that it reaches its most cold hearty capability,” Fles says. “It’s also maximining performance in later years…in yield and quality, because a healthy vine is going to ripen its fruit more efficiently than a struggling vine.”

So, what do they do differently under this new pruning system?

“The simplest way to say it is we're trying to preserve perennial wood as opposed to abandon it when we see a lack of performance,” he says. “So we’re focusing on preserving structure and uninterrupted vascular flow by making less drastic cuts.”

While they’ll never get their vines to look like those that bask in the Spanish or Italian sunshine, the goal is to see these local vines become more robust over time.

“We're really preserving vascular structure and focusing on building big chunky perennial wood,” he said. “That’s very easy to do in mediterranean climates – you’ll often see those big, fat trunks there."

Ultimately, Fles hopes the technique will also boost consistency across the vineyard.

“We're really pursuing uniformity with this new technique. Perhaps we have a couple less shoots, but they're bigger and stronger, and maybe we have a few less clusters, but they're bigger and more mature,” he says. "If you multiply that out over a thousand vines an acre, that can add up.”

A consultant from Simonit & Sirch, an international consulting and training firm that specializes in vine pruning, has been on site twice already this year and will be back a few more times to educate Fles and crew on this particular type of pruning.

“Bringing him here has helped solidify some of the techniques,” Fles says. “When you're doing it with a seasoned professional, you go, ‘Oh, okay, we could do this different. We're doing this correctly, but we need to do this differently,’ that sort of thing."

Tony Jacobson is winemaker and president of P45 Vines & Wines, a local industry group. He’s thrilled to see Shady Lane bring in a consultant for this work.

“I love to see wineries getting outside help from other people in the industry to gain new perspectives on some of the ways to do things,” he says. “This pruning technique's been around for a while, but it's new to us in Michigan.”

The northern Michigan wine industry has taken tremendous leaps in production and quality specifically because of these types of knowledge transfusions, he says.

“Learning from other places is a great way for our industry to evolve in Michigan, because we do have some (real challenges) with cold weather and stuff like that, so if we can take bits and pieces of what's working well in other parts of the world and apply them to our unique growing environment, and wine making as well, we can really keep pushing our industry.”