Vineyard teams can now hone their skills by attending Vinpro’s range of pruning courses from 29 May to 19 June 2019 in the respective wine grape growing areas.

“Just because you can hold a pruning shear, doesn’t mean you know how to prune correctly,” says Hanno van Schalkwyk, Vinpro viticulturist who heads up the training. “Vinpro’s series of vineyard training courses help producers and teams get the best out of their vines by understanding how today’s practices will affect the harvest and eventually the wines on the shelf.”

The pruning module, which has been the most popular of Vinpro’s ten training modules to date, covers the basic principles of pruning, different pruning systems and important pruning tips. Each module is presented as a one day session and includes theory, practical demonstrations and lunch.

Producers can opt to register their teams for any of these prescheduled one day sessions, or contact the training office to request that a session be held on their farm. The dates are as follows:

29 May: Vredendal
4 June: Robertson
5 June: Worcester
11 June: Paarl
18 June: Stellenbosch
19 June: Stellenbosch (English)

The courses are predominantly presented in Afrikaans, unless indicated otherwise. The one day course is presented at R300 per person.

The Vinpro training series, made possible by the Vinpro Foundation, is presented from May to October and covers the full spectrum of wine grape cultivation through ten modules. Vinpro has made these courses available to the industry since 2012 and in 2018 close to 1 500 individuals were trained in 68 sessions.

Click here for more information about the specific training sessions in your region, or contact the training office at 021 276 0429 or training@vinpro.co.za.