Grafting

Grafting.

I think about grafting often.





Grafting is used when a plant does not have an adequate root system to sustain it and for plants that may have difficulty budding.



I remember clear as day the first time I attempted to graft. I was stressed and nervous. I sat at my long school table, perched on my knee, agonizing about my cut, worried about my taping technique.



In general I was completely overwhelmed with a nauseating feeling of incompetence and all thumbs. Petrified that it wouldn't work the way I hoped and the plant would go into shock. As I pressed on through the project, I had racing thoughts that that maybe the new flower would be inappropriate for the root stock - that I mismatched or overestimated and both would die.



As I tend to do, I worried.

Most (if not all) of the wine you drink comes from a grafted vineyard. With a few notable exceptions in South America, vineyards in all nations either perform a bench graft in the nursery or a field graft for the vines. Grafting is survival for wine. Generations and legacy for a fine wine is premised on one fundamental success - a good graft.



Back in 1860's, this little pest known as Phylloxera began attacking vine roots and leaves in both North America and Europe. The only way to outsmart this destructive force was to graft the thick, tough root bark of a Native American vine with the delicate European bud. Thus, the post-phylloxera wine was born. This hybrid rootstock was revolutionary.


If you have the fortune (or misfortune depending on how you look at it) of being around a vinophile pontificating on the profound taste and feel of a pre-phylloxera wine - you will know what he/she is blabbering about. To me, post-phylloxera wine, the world we all live in is much more profound because everything is centered on the graft.



A graft requires two things: the rootstock which will provide the new plant's root system and lower stem; and, the scion which will produce the stem, branches and new fruit.



In grafting, the cut is critical. It is only by a deliberate slice that the cells can open to one another.


The layer of cells located between the wood and bark of a stem from which new bark and wood cells originate of both the scion and rootstock must meet and touch completely. This new union - the wound - must be protected in order to heal. In grafting, that place where root meets bud is the wound. It is always the wound.



Here, you place grafting wax around the wound, tape it and keep it moist to allow for healing.





Very little success in grafting is obtained unless proper care is maintained for the graft. If a binding material such as strong cord or nursery tape is used on the graft, this must eventually be cut shortly after growth starts to prevent girdling.

Yet, in time and with proper care and attention the grafting wound can become the strongest part of a vine.

This place where two joined to grow as one to bring something unique and individual to the world is grafting - is evolutionary - is painful - yet profound.


It is potential.

It is a healing wound.


It is a different sort of propagation - but propagation all the same.


It is an end and beginning.

It is all part of the life of wine.

All part of our life, what makes us, and what we can be - a new varietal in this ever expanding field.