New Vineyard in Old Portugal

[Quinta das Hortas]

Hello. My name is Mark (long time expat American) and my wife and I have a Quinta in Central Portugal in the Daõ Valley DOC (@60 km from Douro). It has taken us several years to clean it up and bring her back to life. We started with the old orchard which now has over 100 fruit and nut trees. Then moved on to 40 olive trees and 30 almonds. And last year we planted a small 225 vineyard on a terrace which was I think used for sheep or goats previously. We planted the local noble grape touriga nacional (red) and some varieties of eating grapes ovas de table. Coming up on first prune. We lost <5% of the vines which I will replant but some others had decent growth. I tested the pH of the soil - a mission if you speak only limited Portuguese - and it was 5.5. The soil is good in nitrogen, nice organic matter and minerals are ok - started liming the soil to bring up pH as was recommended to me by local “grape whisperer”. It will be a 3 year exercise or so he says.

My principal question now is - I have a bunch of old vines in the edges of my terraces which is a common thing here. They use the massive root structure of the vines to secure the slopes. I thought it would be fun to recover them from going wild like they have for last X years (20?). Grape whisperers say hack them off and start again which seems a shame to me as some of the stalks are as thick as my arm. Have no idea what variety they are. I tried to train a set of 6 of the old guys and they exploded in growth but even though I had some flowers- no fruit and vine/leaf growth which I simply couldn’t keep up with. Now I will try again with that 6 and 10 more - but I don’t know if I am wasting my time. Anyone have experience with retraining old masters? Can it be done? Is it worth the time and effort?

thanks in advance. Looking forward to turning back the hands of time on this historic property.

 

[sour_grapes]

I cannot help with your question, but welcome to WMT! That sounds like an interesting adventure for you!

 

[berrycrush]

Welcome to the forum! Very interesting choices you are making. What do you mean by some flowers but no fruit? What happened to the clusters after the flowering?

 

[winemaker81]

Welcome to WMT!

Like Paul, I'm not a grape grower, but from listening to grape growers over the decades, my guess is that you'll be doing some radical butchery to those vines.

I suggest you start a thread in the grape grower's forum, and include pictures. If you have problems with posting pictures, PM me and I'll guide you.

Will the pictures help with advice? I have no idea. I want to see what you have -- it's fun to see stuff like this.