“Tears” of joy: spring marks the vine’s rebirth

The period of deserved rest now draws to a close. Spring is knocking firmly at the door while our vines prepare for a new season until the eagerly awaited moment of the grape harvest. We prepare for the stage of germination that heralds the growth of the bunches on the shoots. Firstly, though we participate in an extremely curious and quite peculiar event: that of the so-called “weeping of the vine”.

Never have tears been more closely connected to the idea of joy and happiness. Let us see what it is about from close up. Observe the shoots in detail during the period going from the last two weeks of March to the beginning of April. You will see a shiny and transparent drop peep out from the points where we pruned. The explanation is purely biological: at the beginning of spring, the vine restarts its lymphatic activity. What seem like the tiny teardrops of a subdued weep, are actually drops of sap that vigorously flow from the trunk towards the branches. Almost by way of “healing” the wounds caused by the pruning. The umpteenth demonstration that Mother Nature never leaves anything to chance.

Why does this happen precisely at the beginning of Spring? Because the lymphatic activity restarts when the temperature rises, continually and not sporadically, above 10 degrees centigrade. This is the moment that marks the resumption of the life-cycle. When the metabolic activity of simple sugars is reactivated, transforming them into starch and simultaneously restarting cell respiration in the plant. Therefore, we can get going again, step after step, until the moment we see the bunches growing abundantly.

At Carpineto, each individual production process – starting obviously from the work on the vineyard – responds to precise and measurable quality standards. We reach the weeping of the vine without ever having ceased to look after each step according to the season of reference. In the winter that we left behind us, the pruning itself was performed using defined quality criteria. Our finest wines come from vines which produce about 1 kilogram of grapes per plant: the equivalent of one bottle per vine. This ensures that the vine is never stressed in terms of productivity, restarting its lymphatic functions at the best of its vigour and of its energies.

This assumption is true for all our farmsteads and for all our vineyards. From the bottles of our consumer products to the Appodiati line, via the Great Appellation that have made Tuscan vine growing and wine making famous all over the world: Nobile di Montepulciano, Brunello di Montalcino and Chianti Classico. “Every good wine is born in the vine” as the popular saying goes. Here in Carpineto we have taken this assumption to the letter, proposing wines firmly rooted in their identity and the result of work on the vine modelled after criteria of absolute quality.