A short localised hail storm can wipe out a year’s harvest in 15 minutes. As the hailstones batter the vines, the foliage is stripped off, the developing fruit is reduced to a pulp and the canes are battered.
Hail damage is particularly hard to bear. Not because it wipes out the fruit for a single year but because it will also have impact upon volume the following year.
The buds for the following year are already formed within the cane of the previous year. Severe damage to the canes makes it extremely difficult for the grower to prune the vines the following spring.
Looking at the canes after they have lignified (later in the season when they turn from green to brown), it’s extremely difficult to tell if the buds have been damaged or not. Should the grower leave more buds on in case they don’t bear shoots (not allowed by AOC), should the grower prune hard and allow the vine to recover? What’s the solution?
Leaving more buds (or nodes as we should call them as there is a primary, secondary and tertiary bud in each ‘eye’ or node) would effectively mean pruning twice. Looking at the canes, it quite hard to tell so pruning is likely to take much longer than in an ordinary year.
It takes around 100 hours to prune one hectare of vines (depending upon vine density which varies from appellation to appellation and region to region). Pruning vines that have been severely damaged will add on another 30 hours per hectare. A third more time to prune a vineyard that produced no fruit at all the previous year.
