This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
You’re at home having dinner with friends and you decide to open a Bodegas Arzuaga wine. You uncork the bottle carefully, let it breathe, and then gently pour the wine into the glasses. This simple action we do with such ordinariness hides the hours of work in the winery that go into it, as well as the care we put into each step of producing this wine that you’ve decided to treat your friends to. Every part of the process is important, but during the bitterly cold winters in Ribera del Duero, pruning is the first step to get high-quality wines. You’ve probably heard about how important it is, but in today’s post, we want to show you everything it means for Bodegas Arzuaga.
Because at our winery, we aim to capture the spirit of Ribera del Duero and we know that there’s a golden rule in winegrowing: quality isn’t the same as quantity. If you have the right amount of grapes on the vine, you’ll have great quality in the wines because you’re going to get good grape ripening, good tannins, the typical kind of grape from Ribera del Duero that we’ll then use to make our crianza, reserva and gran reserva wines. And the first step to achieving this is pruning. We’re going to need a good distribution of the clusters so the grapes are healthy and give us the quality we demand at Bodegas Arzuaga.
Pruning usually begins when the first frosts have already come, although it can also begin if the vines have lost their leaves completely. This is when the vine is dormant as it’s sent all its reserves down to the roots, so we won’t hurt the plant and can begin pruning. We know that the first step to getting high-quality vines happens in the vineyard,
so there are lots of details that must be taken into account during this stage. It’s essential to keep the budding of the vine from coinciding with a period of frosts or very low temperatures. It’s also important to time the pruning right so that, afterwards, the soil temperature rises so in the months that follow the vines can sprout through the buds we left behind.
This ancient process is also a way of connecting with the traditions of the Ribera del Duero region. And with it, we lay the groundwork for the entire process that will come later, so that in the end you can uncork that bottle of Arzuaga wine to enjoy with whomever you want.