Winter pruning is now complete and pretty much straight away, Spring produces green shoots signalling the start of a new vintage. Our vineyard crew, led by our vineyard manager Dan Abotomey, have made careful cuts on 86,000 vines. Pruning is a relentless task each winter. It’s cold and wet and physically demanding. Much of Indigo Vineyard is “cane pruned”. This means that great care is taken with each vine to select strong, thick canes, pointing in the right direction (upwards, but not outwards) then tying them in an arch to the trellis wire. The cut and discarded canes need to be pulled from the trellis before being mulched.

Springis the time for repairing posts and wires, and checking irrigation (although the long- range forecasts suggest it won’t get much use this year), servicing equipment (especially our spray cart which gets a real work out in wet conditions), planting our new blocks and training the vines planted last year.

Increasing demand for some of most popular wines means that we are planting new blocks near the cellar door to Chardonnay, Tempranillo and Sangiovese, taking our total plantings to 50 ha.