Pruning Manual for the Spur Pruned Vine Cord by Simonit & Sirch Method by Marco Simonit | L'Informatore Agrario

"Increasing the longevity of grapevines is a decisive tool for achieving high-quality viticulture. Thinking of continuing to talk about terroir and then having to uproot the vines after twenty years is a completely Italian absurdity," writes Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, in his Preface. How to remedy practices that are often not very attentive to the well-being of the plant? Thanks to the intuition of Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch who - with the vine pruning method bearing their name - have recovered ancient customs, sensitive to the conditions of each individual plant, updated them with the endorsement of scientific research and codified them into simple yet fundamental operational rules.
After the one on Guyot, here is the second manual dedicated to the application of the Method on spur-pruned cordons. With the usual clear exposition and over 400 explanatory images, all aspects that the attentive pruner, professional or not, oriented towards achieving the maximum balance and longevity of the grapevine, must consider to carry out pruning work that aims for excellence are addressed.
In the first part of the volume, the novel features of the Simonit&Sirch Method are made even more evident by the open comparison with traditional pruning practices. The chapters in the second part are dedicated to the application of the Method throughout the different seasons and ages of the vine: from the formation of the rootstock to the development of branching on fifteen-year-old vines, passing through the setting of the cordon (bilateral and unilateral) managing the branching in the two vertical and oblique variants. The operations of conversion and reconstruction on adult plants are not overlooked.

Marco Simonit was born in Gorizia and has cultivated a passion for grapevines since he was a boy. For ten years, he was a technician at the Vini Collio Consortium, and today he leads the team of Grapevine Pruners in transmitting the Simonit&Sirch know-how to the internal workforce of companies with a specific training method for grapevine pruning. A consultant for some of the largest wine companies in Europe, he is the founder of the Italian School of Grapevine Pruning and a lecturer for DUTE (University Diploma in Pruning and Bud Selection in accordance with the flow of sap) at ISVV, Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin in Bordeaux.