Grafting Chardonnay

We’ve been really excited about the quality of the Chardonnay from our RPG Vineyard, and the 2018 Chard was the first of our wines to sell out earlier this year. Demand has been so strong that we are adding another acre at our estate. We have a little room to plant more, but those vines wouldn’t be producing grapes for several years. Since we have over 22 acres of mature Pinot Noir but just a little more than one acre of Chardonnay, we decided to graft an acre of Pinot over to Chardonnay to increase our production more quickly. A lot goes into the strategy, timing, and techniques for vineyard projects like these, and I thought I’d take a moment to share our thoughts.

Whole classes are taught in how grafting works and how to do it properly, but the concept is fairly simple: Woody plants have an active growth layer just under the bark called cambium. If you can attach a freshly cut branch from one plant to the trunk of another plant in such a way so that the cambium layers are touching, they can grow together and form a graft union. This is the way almost all fruit trees and grape vines are propagated, with the grafting done before planting. Grafting in the field is done in the spring, when the sap has started to flow and the vines are actively growing.

With smaller plants like grape vines, you can also graft a mature plant to a different variety. This gives you a new variety or clone with a mature root system, so it starts acting like an older vine almost from the beginning. It will take this growing season to fully establish the grafts and the new shoots of Chardonnay, but next year this acre will look like 20-year-old Chardonnay. Compared to planting new vines, grafting gives us more mature vines in much less time. So the work we’ve been doing this spring will lead to more 2022 estate Chardonnay, complete with 20-year-old roots!

So don’t worry, keep drinking David Paige Wines Chardonnay. The 2019 is out now, and we’re working on making even more in the future! Click here for ordering our 2019 Chardonnay!