How to Set Vineyard Posts

When you sit back and relax with a nice glass of wine, you probably don’t realize how much hard work went into bringing the grapes from the ground to your glass.

Today, we’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look at part of the process. Here’s how to set posts to support grapes in a vineyard.

This spring we’ll put in about 1,200 metal posts to support our new Petite Pearl and Noriet grape vines.

Each plant holds fifteen to twenty pounds of grapes, so we place a post at every third plant.

First, the team marks each post with spray paint at the two-and-a-half foot mark. That’s how far the posts will go under ground. We want to make sure they’re all uniform.

With five-and-a-half feet of each post above ground, the grape vines will have plenty of room to stretch and grow. They’ll be happy and productive catching catch a lot of sunshine. Happy grapes make the best wine.

We check each post’s position before we pound it into the ground.

Then, we get to hammering. This Rhino motorized post pounding tool has been an arm saver! When we planted our last field, we pounded each post in by hand! It took about a month and a half. This year, it should take half the time.

Matt checks each post with a level.

Ten down, 1,190 to go.

So far, it has rained during every day of this project. It’s not the most comfortable for the farmers, but the grapes are living the dream. It’s exactly what they need to kick off a great growing season.

Farmer Frank said it well. “This is where all the wine begins is right at the basics. [It] is planting the vines and taking care of them. If you didn’t have the vines, you wouldn’t have the wine and what would the world be like without wine?” Well said, Frank. Well said.

If you liked seeing how we place vineyard posts, you might also like to see how (and why) we mulch the vines or how we plant those vines in the first place.