The Kindest Cut

Grape vines must be pruned. Like anything meant to grow and flourish, dead wood needs to be shed.

Between January and March, when the vines lay dormant, is the best time to prune away anything the vine does not need. This practice creates the least disruption for the plant and insures the health of the vine growth for the 2011 vintage.

Pruning is carried out on Boxwood vines with fastidious care and the percision of experienced hands. The finished product, the well-crafted late-winter vineyard at Boxwood - while a beautiful photo - could also speak a detailed volume on superior vineyard management. Moreover, if you look at the vine structure both before and after pruning, you begin to understand vines as a fine craft and the craftsmen as benevolent and proud keepers of these vines. Every vine on Boxwood's acreage is overseen, pruned, trained ,and picked by the same hands which have handled these vines since the day they arrived on the property.

Pruning leaves behind mountains of spent vine. The vines piled between vineyard blocks await composting. Back into the earth is the kindest cut for pruned vine: There it remains a part of the cycle of life. In this way and many others, we sustain.

While the winter vine awaits chipping, the lawns at Boxwood are verdant and thick once again. The bud break of the 2011 vintage is not far off.