Italian wines: the vine is awakening

The vine is awakening, in all Italian wine regions, those of Chianti, Amarone, Bardolino, Barolo… you can see this spectacular phenomenon, for the moment only hinted. In fact the just awakened vines are, for the moment, very… naked! So they choose a first, new dress.

The first “deb dress” they choose is yellow, because when Nature wakes up the primroses bloom in the fields and in the woods and rapeseed in the vineyards: indeed the sun immediately wants to give his new imprint to the vegetation. Tall, slender and charming this canola provides an elegant cover to the vines.

So yellow is a sign of joy for the hills you see in Tuscan Wine Tours, and rapeseed in the vineyard is the sign of the natural cultivation without herbicides or other harmful substances. In the farming world there are two schools of thought about the grass and weeds growing in the middle of the vines and along the rows. The wine growers who apply the first method think that the ground is better to leave it completely clean so that free seedlings do not take away the nourishment to her older sister, and to do this, they often loosen the soil among the rows in order to clear it from grass and other plants; the second method is leaving them grow freely, so that the seedlings puncturing the soil to allow rain to enter deeply into the soil and in case of heavy rainfall, they retain the ground preventing it from being dragged away.

In addition, rapeseed with lupine, clover and some other plants are very useful to fertilize the soil in a natural way using the old method of “green manure” now back in fashion with organic farming. The farmer lets these plants grow, then he cuts them and spades the ground, burying them where they are because these plants have the power to feed the soil and the vines in a natural way. Best Italian wineries use this method, which needs patience and slowness, as they will explain you during the tuscany wine tours, but it’s worth it. Organic farming makes it the richest wines of flavor, as a good wood makes richer the sound of a guitar, and you can tested in our wine tasting tours. Organic farming also promotes what in Europe we call “ecological corridors”, rich in flowers roads right as a resting spot for bees and butterflies, many of which are endangered. Even the vines, we think, will be happy to get gradually dressed in sprouts, flowers and colorful butterflies.