Farming Practices

Naggiar Vineyards prides itself in adhering to the best and most recently sustainable farming practices available in the viticulture industry. The growing of quality fruit depends not only on our vineyards, but how they are tended and harvested. In this sense we are truly farmers before we are winemakers.

As soon as young vines start coming out of their cartons, field crews train the vines to the trellis system keeping all the shoots off the ground. Cordons are trained to wires as soon as possible, to ensure clean, healthy growth and good air flow around the vines. Two year old vines are carefully pruned for ideal shoot and spur positions. Doing this early in the life cycle of the vines ensures better spray coverage and penetration, good air circulation and sunlight penetration in the young canopy. It also avoids future overcropping and overcrowding of the grape clusters. Spring time pruning is essential for vine and canopy health.

Weather stations were installed to continuously monitor weather data and relay that data to a central computer. Temperature, humidity, wind directions and speed, solar radiation, rain, wet bulb temperature and dew point readings are permanently recorded. We are our own weathermen! This data helps control canopy size and keeps berry size small for better quality fruit.

Managing the vine canopy during the growing season is crucial to development of quality fruit. Meticulous attention to detail will lead to balanced vines, clean fruit, small clusters, smaller berries, exposed fruit, good cluster separation and berry color uniformity.

At harvest time, our farming practices are equally as meticulous as throughout the rest of the year. We have a small lab onsite which closely monitors the sugar, PH, and acidity of each block, and sometimes even each individual row if deemed necessary. Both berries and clusters are tested. Picking decisions however, are made as much by taste readiness as the calculated sugar, PH and acidity levels. All fruit is hand-picked, a labor intensive but important step in minimizing the damage to grape clusters. Harvesting is done at night using lights mounted on our tractors. This ensures that fruit is picked in cool weather and that grapes are delivered and handled for crushing early in day, preserving maximum freshness.