In Costers del Sió Winery we are always aware of the care of the vineyards since this care depends entirely on the production and quality of the grapes and therefore on our wines.

We know that the Syrah and Garnacha varieties adapt perfectly to our terroir (*) and, for this reason, these days we have been grafting grape vines of the Merlot variety with cuttings of the Syrah variety. The grafting process is a very careful and artisan work that is manually made vine by vine. Today we explain the process in order to get you closer to our vineyards and to know a little more about the work we are doing before you can taste our estate wines. 

What is a graft?

The graft associates the two pieces of plant and forms a complete plant joined by a welding fabric that allows the sap to move from the root (formed in the rootstock) to the aerial part (trunk, branches and leaves). There are different types of vine grafts, but we use the shield budding (or T-budding). Budding is somewhat different from grafting because in budding only one bud is used.

We always make this shield budding in spring, in full movement of the sap.

How do we make the shield budding in our vineyards

We perform the shield budding as follows:

1. With the knife we ​​remove the bark from the vine in the area where the budding should go, towards the lower part of the trunk.

2. With the grafting knife, a T-shaped cut is made on the rootstock to separate the bark from the cambium.

 

3. With the help of the graft knife, we open both sides of the vertical cut made.

4. Take the branch of the grape variety to be grafted (in our case Syrah) and cut the base in the form of a shield, ensuring that a good gem or eye with the petiole of a leaf remains in the broad upper part. 

5. Using the knife, the shield budd is polished avoiding touching with the knife the internal part of the gem. This juicy inner part is the sap that will join with the sap of the vine.

6. Then take the cutting by petiole (to avoid touching the inner part) and introduce it delicately into the T-shaped cut that we had previously made in the master vine and ensuring that the upper part of the shield is in contact with the cut of the vine.

7. Finally, we wrap tightly with grafting tape leaving the bud exposed and we only have to wait a few days. In case it has worked, touching it will detach very easily leaving a green wound visible. Otherwise, we will see that the petiole has dried up. 

Finally, this is how the vine is once grafted:

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(*) Terroir: concept that calls the interaction of factors such as climate, soil, orientation, variety and winemaker, which give personality to the wine.