Cloning Madeira Vines

[Eric Ifune]

To clone, the easiest way is to take a piece of budwood, i.e. a scion of vine with a fruiting bud, and bench graft it to root stock. Then you plant the graft. The portion of the vine you prune away every year has fruiting buds.
In Madeira, and especially the Faja dos Padres, a few hundred vines is a lot.

[Bradley Bogdan]

I could see this having occurred one of two ways:
First, it could have been clone using the standard method of using portions of canes pruned during dormancy. If this vine was unkempt and old, you may have had enough good wood to work with for a few hundred vines. Most vines will look like Medusa's head if you leave them be for just a few years, nevermind decades.

The other, more technical, option is to work from meristem "shavings" from the original vine. When nurseries/universities make virus free clones, this is how it's done. It also allows you to start MANY more plants at the same time. The downside to this method is you really need to be able to nurse these plants in lab/greenhouse for a while until they reach graftable size, meaning you're putting in more money and effort than simple cuttings.

This is definitely worth it's own thread, Andy. I'd also love if someone was able to ask them more details, I'd love to know.

[Eric Ifune]

My guess is the clones were done in a lab since it was done by the Madeira Wine Institute. Actually, the Rare Wine Co. flyer states the initial Malvasia Candida vine was found in the late 70's and the new vines planted on the property in the 1980's. So these would be an early harvest from these new vines, much like the 1931 Noval Nacional was from new vines. I've actually visited the Faja and Mr. Fernandes pointed out the cleft in the cliff where he found the vine. I do believe the flyer has a bit of an error when it states that the ancestors of Mr. Fernandes obtained the Faja in 1921. I believe it was actually his wife's family who purchased the property back then. By the way, Mario Fernandes is one of the sons of Eugeino Fernandes who vinified the Over 40 year old Verdelho that many on the forum have had.

[Andy Velebil]

Sorry,
While Trying to split this out, a couple of the original posts got lost. Not sure where they went and why they didn't split over. Again, very sorry.

I was able to recover them, but they will appear below OUT OF ORIGINAL ORDER. They are labeled #1, #2 and #3, which is the original order they were in.

[Andy Velebil]

#1: Post Posted Sat Aug 24, 2013 3:02 pm by Daniel Fraley

Gary Banker wrote:
As of this morning the RWC web site shows 5 bottles in stock.



Looks to be sold out now! A question about this vintage... RWC's newsletter said a lone vine was found on Faja dos Padres and cloned in 1980. If this was harvested in 1986, is that enough time to produce a high quality grape? I'm guessing it would take 2-3 years alone before the clones fruited at all.

[Andy Velebil]

#2: Post Posted Sat Aug 24, 2013 5:46 pm by Bradley Bogdan

In general, 3ish years is what it takes to get usable fruit, but really over 5 years is all it takes to get fruit that's most of the way there to that of great old vines. It's really diminishing returns on concentration and quality after that point.

[Andy Velebil]

#3: Post Posted Sun Aug 25, 2013 8:53 am by Andy Velebil


The question is, how long does it take to clone a vine and what is the process for doing so. That does seem like a short time to clone and grow enough vines from one single vine into many. But that is pure speculation as I don't know fully what the cloning process is. All I know is they take a cutting from the mother vine and grow other vines from it. So how many usable cuttings can you take from one single vine in a year? Anyone????

(I'll probably split this into it's own topic very soon).

[Bradley Bogdan]

Another factor to consider is whether they had existing rootstock in the field to graft on to (field grafting). It doesn't sound like there was from the story, but if so, the wait to first good harvest would be mostly about getting the vine trained properly v. quality/concentration concerns, so 2 or 3 years versus 3-5.