The Grape Inspiration, Northern England Grapevine

The Grape Inspiration....

Here is my German vine, as you can see it's a bit of a monster.  This is grown upon the South facing wall of my home.  This vine was purchased about seven or eight years ago as a one year old cutting from the Black Forest, Germany.  After planted it stayed in the ground fairly dormant, it did have leaves on but did not put on much new growth.  In following years it put on metres and metres of growth to the present day where now it is at its full size for this situation.  I do believe it could potentially grow much bigger.

Here you can see I am giving the vine the first prune of this years growing season.  It's hard to see in this photo but the grapes are at the early stages of forming.  I only want to bunches of grapes maximum per arm of growth so this is the point I prune to.  I do this because if you allow the growth to continue, the grapes will not develop and the plant will put its energy in to growth over fruiting.  I will try to explain this in better detail at a later date.

Check out this film that I've put on YouTube to promote the blog, it was taken about six to eight weeks after the above pictures were taken.  I had to give it its second pruning of the growing season because unfortunately, two long limbs have fell from the wall over night.  Hungover this morning from Corbridge Festival I pinned it back up to the wall and pruned it to allow the air to pass through better cutting out any unnecessary growth.  This also achieves a good leaf to grape ratio.  

Lots of grapes!!!!  Last year's harvest was 16 kilograms, the best so far.  This gave me 10 gallons of wine, around 50 bottles of our very own organic, homegrown and homebrewed TOONSHINE!