1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

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In the Port Wine Country.

vineyard there are always a certain number of cuttings which have failed to take root, and the common practice is to supply their place hy provining, performed by cutting long trenches in the same direction as the vines are planted, and turning down and burying in them the stem of an adjacent vine, leaving three ofits shoots above ground to furnish in time three new vines. These trenches are never completelyfilled up,in order that they may receive all the rain-water flowing from the heights above. After the vintage is over holes are also dug round the stocks of the vines to receive the winter rains. This labour,known as the escava, is immediately followed bythe poda or pruning. An old AJto Douro proverb says— "O cesto n'uma mao,e'n outra o podao"— that is,"the basket in one hand and the pruning-knife in the other meaning that the vines should be pruned directly the vintage is finished. At the pruning only a couple ofbranches, which are to yield fruit the year ensuing and are never suffered to grow more than three and a-half feet from the ground, are left. A couple of eyes on the stock below these branches furnish the shoots for the following year. Early in March the cava a montes takes place—^that is, the loosening ofthe soil to a depth often or twelve inches,followed by piling up the earth in heaps in order that the roots of the vines may be protected from the sun's more powerful rays. At the same time the vineyards are thoroughly weeded. The next operation isthe tying ofthe vinesto snpports made from cane-breaks, broom,and other shrubs, or young pines,and evenfrom reeds. Thisisaccomplished by attach ingthe main branch of the vine near the second or third shoot to the prop and securing the end to another, or, if the branch be long, even to a third or fourth support. In May the redra,or levelling of the heaps thrown up early in the spring,takes place, when the ground is cleared of all fresh weeds and a new layer of soil is exposed to the fertilising influences of the atmosphere and the schistous fragments to more rapid disintegration. All the digging is done with heavy two-pronged hoes, which the labourers have to provide themselves with.