🌿 Grapevine nursery

A grapevine nursery is a farm where young vines are grown and grafted for planting in vineyards. The grower buys ready saplings here and does not raise them himself. Vines are propagated by cuttings, pieces of one-year shoots. The cutting is rooted in the nursery, and then grafted: the top of the desired variety is joined to the roots of a rootstock resistant to the pest phylloxera. The grafted plant is grown for one or two seasons until the roots are strong, and then released as a sapling. Nurseries monitor plant health. A good nursery tests plants for viruses and diseases and issues a certificate. This matters because a vineyard works for decades, and a sick sapling can spoil everything. A nurseryman, a specialist in growing young plants, works in the nursery. The choice of variety, rootstock and clone made in the nursery shapes the future vineyard. So the nursery is one of the first steps in the making of future wine.