One of the great challenges of world viticulture is the fight against the so-called wood diseases, which have been described as the ‘cancer of the vineyard’. In France, the number of unproductive vineyards due to wood diseases and other premature wilt diseases is estimated at 13% of the total, with a loss of income of 1 billion euros. In Spain there is still no concrete estimate, but simply because this problem has been studied much later. The reality is that the figures should be quite similar.
Numerous national and international research centers are working to address these diseases that threaten not only the profitability of the crop, but also the prestige of appellations and wineries that will obviously not be able to continue producing their best wines if the life of the vineyard is reduced to a mere 25 years.. Apart from academic and institutional research, Familia Martínez Bujanda leads a private business consortium with other wineries whose objective is to implement a totally ecological treatment to act against fungi that attack wood. The project, called “Ecological intervention to improve the health status of grapes and its effect on the quality of grapes and their wines” (INNTER-ECOSANVID), began in 2015 and, in principle, concludes at the end of this year.
The trials we are working with in our vineyards at Finca Antigua, in La Mancha, are offering very encouraging results, although this problem should lead us to reflect on cultivation practices.
Familia Martínez Bujanda works sustainable viticulture in all its vineyards, whose main objective is to minimize the use of agrochemical products, reduce waste to zero and optimize production methods. We are convinced that the problem of wood diseases has to do, on the one hand, with the productive clones that nurseries throughout Spain began to distribute in the 1980s.but also with the ‘exhaustion’ and overproduction viticulture that has become generalized in Spain and throughout the world..
Professional pruning, with proper wound healing, yield control, proper vegetation management and, above all, a viticulture committed to quality rather than quantity are some of the best recipes for the fight against wood diseases, apart from finding the new ‘miracle product’ that everybody wants, but which will be much more effective if accompanied by these sustainable practices, because, among other things, we inherit vineyards and intend to continue to pass them on to future generations when we are no longer here.
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