Many vineyards these days are machine planted, taking care of much of the backbreaking manual work in getting a vineyard established. However, with machine planting, site preparation is even more critical for good establishment. With a planting rate of between 12,000 and 15,000 vines per day, it pays to have someone on site to supervise and make sure everything gets planted in the right place and at the right row width and intervals. It also pays to make a planting plan as the work proceeds so that vine numbers, varieties and clones and positions can be recorded before they get forgotten.

Once planted, vines do not manage themselves. The aim must be to get them established at the lowest cost, with the minimum number of failures and with the greatest number brought into cropping as soon as possible. Although in some countries – usually ones with very different growing conditions to the UK’s and with added cultural and appellation considerations – vines are not brought into cropping until they are four and five years old. Under UK conditions and with many sites and soils, a small crop can be obtained in the second year with a 30-50% crop in the third and a 90%+ crop in the fourth – all without any harm being done to the long term health and cropping pattern of the vines. How this is done is nosecret. It takes inputs of labour, good weed control and attention to detail, with timely trellising and good disease control. Having an experienced consultant on board will help this happen.