Yield Per Vine

I’m curious about the yield per vine that the winemakers/growers on this board obtain. I was reading the most recent Sine Qua Non mailer and Manfred Krankl opined that the “only meaningful yield measurement” was the yield per vine. Based on the wide range of spacing in vineyards I would agree with him. Krankl’s stated that the yields per vine in his estate vineyards was 1.72 lbs per vine. I’ve read an estimate the D’Yquem’s yields a about .40 lbs per vine but, of course, that is for shriveled and botrytised fruit so you would expect them to be extremely low.

Many amateur sites talk about an expectation of 8 lbs per vine or more. That is not what you would be shooting for if you plan to make quality wine. I recently harvested a section of my Pinot Noir vineyard and calculated 3.1 lbs per vine. So what do others here get?

VM

I think yield per linear foot of trellis is the only way to look at it. Otherwise, how does one compare vines spaced meter by meter with those spaced at 2 meters by 3 meters? I surely don’t expect them to have equal yields per vine.

On a per linear foot basis, I hope for 1.0-1.5 pounds per foot but generally get less. However, it is a home hobby vineyard with less than ideal conditions due to shading that I can’t rectify without cutting down my neighbors’ trees.

"Dear Neighbor,

“Sorry about the noise from the chainsaw. I will compensate you for the damage with a couple of bottles of my homemade Petite Sirah!”

:stuck_out_tongue:

Too many factors for any formula that would make sense. For what it is worth, I have probably 475 fully producing vines. Each of those is “expected” to produce a minimum of 64 clusters. Big clusters? Heavy clusters? Thick or thin skinned berries, producing less or more juice? To me, the only meaningful thing is tonnage on the weight tag and how many barrels the resulting juice fills. Then I suppose for that vintage one could back into a “yield per vine,” if one should want to.

With all due respect…and there is a lot of respect due Mr Krankl, I can’t agree.

Consider 3 vineyards (two of which I work with): a 7’ x 10’ spur-pruned GDC vineyard, a 4’ x 7’ double Guyot vineyard with 8-bud canes, and a 10,000 vine/ha Medoc vineyard with head-trained vines with two 4-bud canes. If you’re not a viticulturist, this may not mean anything to you, but I assure you they are quite different and would appear light years apart. The suggestion is that the only way we can compare balance in them is by weight per vine? Not to say there is a silver bullet way to do so, but that metric would be towards the bottom of my list.

My best analogy is that this is like saying the only way we can compare people is by weight. Never mind height, age, sex, body fat %. Weight. A 250 lb, 25 year old NFL linebacker who is 6’4" and 5% body fat is less fit than a 235 lb 53 year old accountant who is 5’9". Because he weighs more.

Great analogies. I agree that lbs./vines is a fairly useless figure and that is probably why most speak in tons/acre. I would also challenge the notion that less is always more in terms of quality. Obviously hanging to much fruit is a bad thing, but I believe too little has its disadvantages as well. Too little fruit will ripen earlier depriving hang time and potentially pulling harvest into a hotter part of the season. Here in Sonoma County, this can be the difference between harvest over the Labor Day heat spike vs. later in September when things begin to cool down. Too light can also lead to maturity lagging sugar leaving you with unripe grapes at sugar levels you want to pick at. Of course if you take ripeness to the extreme, maybe you need a light crop to make sure the vine can get to the high sugars you are seeking. So factors on yield are many - soil, climate, varietal, stylistic goals, vine age, more I’m sure.

IMG_20181004_085959238.jpg
Here’s a cropped pic of my stepson’s Grenache at Dark Horse in Talmage. Many of the clusters are the size of small cantelopes. Compare this to some of my clone 943 Pinot that are about tennis ball sized. The pounds per vine is way too vague. I don’t mind the pounds per foot of cordon, but canopy size and fruit-to-leaf ratio is another thing I use.

You might enjoy reading “Terroir and Other Myths of Winegrowing” by Mark A. Matthews. About a third of the book is dedicated to the “myth” of the importance of yield, the genealogies behind the common beliefs about different yield metrics people focus on, etc. My take away was that yield (any way you measure it) is pretty unimportant until you have too much fruit on the vine that it stalls ripening–this will vary greatly from variety to variety and site to site.

Mark Matthews was my faculty adviser in graduate school as it happens.

There is currently a very interesting multi-year study going on at the Oakville station on the source-sink relationship. I think a fair summary of what it has shown so far is that yield within the range they can actually produce there is irrelevant. They can start to affect ripening dynamics only when they remove about 2/3 of the leaves on the plant.

I believe that pounds of fruit per foot of trellis works really well, within each varietal. Because no matter your vine density, one thing holds true… on each vine the spurs are 3-4 inches apart. So whether in a row you have 3 foot vines or 6 foot vines, your pounds per vine may be 2x as high in the 6 foot spacing than the 3 foot spacing, but per foot of trellis, the same.

The only thing I can say with certainty to me is “tons per acre” is a useless measurement.