The vines look a bit of a mess after the taille. The pruners cut and move on down the row, leaving the sarments (vine shoots) tangled helter skelter in their web. Danté and I woke this morning to a scattering of snow and found that an elf had come through and tidied it all up.
The vignerons call this tirer les bois -“pulling the wood.” (And they move cautiously since it’s easy to poke your own eyes out.) The job is to untangle the sarments from the frame-wires that the tendrils curled themselves around in the spring. They are then laid out in the middle of the rows.
Sometimes people tie them in bundles, making fagots to carry away for kindling. (Also great for barbeques.) But most of the time they remain in the vineyard.
A winter fact-of-life, the positive side of death. Vine leaves fall, decompose, improve the topsoil; sarments are mulched to restore nutrients. Even the grapes, carted away at harvest can return. After pressing they’re sent to the local government-controlled distillery for grain alcohol extraction. But vignerons can reclaim their share and return to the earth what is hers. When fertilization is necessary the grape-remains are judiciously mixed with the farm compost, a brew of hay and manure resting and aging on the edge of the woods. It’s a favorite hang out for boar and chickens searching for delicacies like that faithful handmaiden of soil equilibrium, the earthworm.
