Viticulture
Yields
How much fruit a vineyard produces, and its genuinely complicated relationship with quality.
Overview
Lower yields generally concentrate flavour, and most appellations set legal maximums on that basis.
The relationship is real but not linear, and it is often overstated. Extremely low yields can produce unbalanced, over-extracted wine, and a healthy vine carrying a moderate crop frequently outperforms a stressed one carrying almost nothing.
Green harvesting — cutting off bunches at véraison — is the usual intervention. Its benefits are debated: the vine may compensate by putting more into the remaining fruit, or may simply have wasted resources on what was removed.
The low-yield-equals-quality relationship is widely assumed and only partly supported. Vine balance matters more than yield alone, and yield figures are a crude proxy for it.
Sources
Sources consulted
- UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology — University of California, Davis
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The largest single influence on what a wine tastes like — larger than grape, producer or winemaking, and the reason the same variety is unrecognisable in two places.
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Climate change and wine
Warming is already reshaping where wine is grown and what it tastes like.
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Harvest and picking decisions
When to pick — the single most consequential decision a producer makes each year.