If you travel by road across the continent, much of the pattern of the countryside is dictated by the vine. South-facing slopes are often coated in vines, their serried ranks frequently marking out the east-west meridian, designed to ensure that all grapes get exposure to sunlight. Occasionally you can see the rows of vines laid out north-south, allowing an interesting argument to follow about which sytem gets the most sunlight to the vines. February is traditionally the month for pruning the vines. With the sap low, the last of the brown leaves now gone from the overwintering leaders, the viticulturalist uses this month to snip last year's growth away and leaves himself with no more than five buds on each vine from which this year's growth will spring. In almost every wine-growing region there are different methods of pruning, but it was discovered a long time ago that the vine produces its best grapes when it's pruned. If it isn't pruned, each year you end up with more and more foliage and fewer and fewer grapes.

The varying techniques affect the look of the landscape. From Roman times until the Middle Ages vines were trained between trees for support, because a vine laden with mature fruit can't support itself. It made for a harmonious landscape, but without the order that modern techniques impose. Today vines tend to grown in a mono-cultural environment, with whole areas planted solely in vines. Cheap mass-produced wire means that vines can be trained in trellis format. Where vineyards are designed for quantity rather than for quality the vines will be pruned low to the ground and the vines will be kept bushy, a pre-requisite for mechanical harvesting, when a specially built tractor and picker straddle the vines and pull off every bunch, ripe or not. Human pickers prefer not to have bend down all day long to do their work, so where vines are picked by hand, the vines are trained onto wires stretched between posts making the bunches easier to reach. Another system used extensively in the north of Italy is to have the rows widely spaced and the vines trained in a canopy over the space between the rows. This system allows the pickers to stand on the back of a slowly moving trailer that travels under the canopy and pick the bunches directly into the trailer.

Every system of pruning and training has plusses and minuses. What makes it easier to harvest the grapes may make pruning the leaf canopy harder, which is the other major yearly pruning task. At least once, and maybe twice, the vines will be pruned of foliage to ensure sunlight falls on the ripening bunches.

Wine of the Week

Caliterra Cabernet Sauvignon 2000

Caliterra produce the big four varietals in the increasingly competitive under €10 range. It's the product of a partnership between Robert Mondavi of California and Eduardo Chadwick of Chile and it's produced in a high-tech winery, with tight controls on consistency. The Cabernet is fruity, medium-bodied and quite long on the palate. Easy drinking for €8.99, widely available.