Practices & Principles
Pertaringa has always been at the forefront of vineyard innovation, from the development and use of machine harvesting and machine pre-pruning in the late 1970s to the early adoption of soil moisture monitoring equipment and biological and biodynamic pest and disease management.
Since 2006, there has been a ‘back to the future’ approach to the vineyard with the introduction of biodynamics and generational farming techniques. A significant amount of vineyard restructuring has taken place with 15ha of Shiraz being carefully re-worked to its original early 1970s shape, and along with careful shoot thinning, leaf removal and irrigation management, this is resulting in some fantastic fruit coming out of the vineyard.
Richard Leask and the vineyard team have also been working towards the vineyard becoming chemical free. This process has been based around the biodynamic principles of Rudolf Steiner’s 1924 lectures on practical, energetic and spiritual approaches to crop fertility and health, and a biological farming program to control fungal disease where machine weeding is used to control undervine weeds.
