No insecticides
Minimal amounts of herbicides are used for weed control. Only once since the early 2000’s has a small area of vineyard been sprayed for insects. Vineyard pests are controlled and kept to a minimum by a large number of guinea fowl, other birds, and predator insects.
Bees are very happy and productive on Villiera. We have moved away from cultivation in the vineyard using natural weeds to form mulch (the practice of no till started in 2016). The cultivation of cover crops can cause compaction and burns up the organic matter in the soil releasing it into the atmosphere. The weeds come up themselves, thus saving costs, and because most flower, they add a good source of food for insects such as bees.
The main source of the honey flow starts with a yellow flower Ramnas (very similar to Canola but wild) then Echium weed, Eucalyptus, Acacia, plus many other veld flowers. There seems to be a correlation between a good honey flow and a good harvest. If we have early autumn rains, a good winter, and good rains in spring we have a long honey flow. These conditions are also good for the vines, especially the dryland vineyards.
Vineyard Practices
Villiera Wines started working with Livio Tognon of Simonit&Sirch (Italian vineyard specialists) in 2014. Livio visits us from Italy in mid-June until November to train our vineyard pruning team.
Ultimately, we are looking at increasing the productive life of our vineyards to over 50 years. We will also be improving uniformity, quality, and the ability of the vines to withstand stress. To facilitate this the idea is to make as few pruning wounds as possible, only small wounds, do a lot of suckering (Summer pruning) and maintain chronological order.
Villiera Wines is a member of the Old Vine Project and currently produces four wines from Certified Heritage Old Vines.