The rhythms of the vineyard

I hope you're not tired of vineyard photos. The vineyard is a prominent feature in our daily lives. We see it out the windows. We walk through it nearly every day. We smell it in every season, whether the ground is parched or soaked with rain. The vineyard always looks different and it always looks the same.

Newly pruned vines stand on the banks of the Cher.

And yet, because neither of us is a grower or a winemaker, our understanding of the vineyard is superficial. We can't identify the varietals by the shapes of their leaves. We don't know when a vine is healthy or sick. We don't know how to prune in winter. We don't know when the harvest should begin.

But, for our part, we do know how to work a corkscrew.