September is the month when grapes are traditionally harvested (picking) in Brotnje and Herzegovina, and that this will be one of the years in which there will be fewer grapes due to weather problems and diseases, the chief enologist of the Čitluk Winery, Tihomir Prusina, confirmed in an interview with Fena.
“Unfortunately, I have to say that in my 39 years of service here at the Čitluk Winery, this is the worst harvest year in Brotnje, automatically in Herzegovina. There I will exclude the Čitluk Winery, some large winegrowers and winemakers who managed to protect the grapes. Today in Brotnje, you have vineyards where there are not even a single ounce of grapes per 1,000 vines, downy mildew (or downy mildew) has taken its toll,” said Prusina, who revealed the reason for that.
“At one point there were seven days of intense rain, if you treated the vine with some contact or other means, at that time the vine could not assimilate those organic means to protect itself. It was a short period. Those persistent people who worked intensively in these abnormal conditions, so instead of 8 to 14 days between treatments in normal conditions, they managed to save their vines because they treated them on the fifth or sixth day,” explains the chief oenologist of the Čitluk Winery and adds that it is important listening to the profession also played a factor.
The people who managed to save their vineyards have the same grapes as last year, and the quality remains the same.
“We have already been picking for a week, this year the quality of the remaining grapes is identical to last year. The vineyards that were damaged, now it is important to preserve them for the next year’s harvest. Downy mildew is here, it is too intense and has never been like this, it will be necessary to do a fine pruning and then two winter sprayings against the disease so that it does not spread into the next year. We know that all vine diseases overwinter on the ground and fallen leaves, raindrops, dew and wind carry the disease and spread it further. We need to be careful in order to have something next year as well,” he warns.
As he says, a very important role is played by the vineyard position, slopes, rocky terrain, higher altitude.
“In Brotnje, the area of Čitluk, Čerin and Hamzić fields suffered the most. Those vineyards are located at lower altitudes, and that also depended on how much rain fell where. The eastern parts of Brotnje, such as Tepčić, Dobro Selo, had less precipitation and managed to protect the vineyards,”said Prusina.
Unlike private and small winegrowers, Čitluk Winery has completely preserved its vineyards.
“The winery has preserved 100 percent of its vineyards, there are no diseases here because we used earlier protection. We have five plantation vineyards, each of which has a graduate engineer in agronomy who supervises everything. I personally get asked for advice quite a few times, mostly in the wine segment, but it was more frequent about thirty years ago. People were educated, they remembered my advice, they use it, and I’m glad about that,” he said.
