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Vineyard recovery after the fire

Fire damage to the vineyard

Summary of fire damage to the vineyard

Fire damage and subsequent recovery will vary with each situation. Each business needs to carefully assess the damage to their vineyard and decide what’s best for each block and their business at the time.

What should you do straight after the fire?

Vines are tough — most vines with minor to moderate damage should recover fully within one to two years. However bad things look on day one after the fire, be patient. Before you determine how many vines you may need to replace, they will need time to recover from shock after the fire. You may also need time to recover before you start making decisions about the future of your vines.

As soon as possible after the fire:

1

Safety first
2

Get the water back on to whatever you can as soon as possible
3

I can’t get my irrigation going – now what?
4

Step back and let your vines respond
5

Learn from other grower experiences and agencies
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Evidence for your insurer

A fire ground is potentially dangerous. Only go back into your vineyard if the relevant fire authority has told you it’s safe to do so.

Watch out for trip hazards, sharp objects under your feet and hot metal.
Wear appropriate PPE, such as thick leather gloves, goggles and a face mask. The smoke from CCA posts is toxic — seek professional advice.
Don’t stand under trees or power lines: both can fall after fire damage or heat stress.

Even if your vines are blackened stumps and look dead, water them. It's too soon to tell if they’ll shoot.

Walk through your vineyard and identify what irrigation capability you still have and what needs replacing. Where possible, cap pipes and divert water to make the most of the lines you still have and get the water straight onto the vines. These vines can be recovering while you shop for replacement irrigation supplies to get the rest of your vineyard up and running.

Your vines have been stressed by the heat, smoke and any direct damage — giving them a moist soil will provide them with the best chance to regrow and build carbohydrate reserves for dormancy.

Avoid soil erosion where possible by grading temporary contours or laying straw bales to control water run off on bare, fire-affected soils.

Don’t panic. Whilst current evidence suggests that getting the water back on as soon as possible gives vines the best chance of recovery, all is not lost if practicalities and the availability of parts prevent it from happening as soon as you’d like.

DON’T reach for your chainsaw or snips, however tempting. Once the water is back on, step back and let nature take its course.

Grapevines are tough and most will push new shoots from even seriously burned stumps. Once you can see which vines are responding and how, you can start making longer term decisions about the best way forward.

WHY WAIT? Some growers regret acting too fast and wasting money on high-cost solutions before the extent of the damage was clear or their panic had subsided sufficiently to enable them to make rational decisions.

Take a look at stories from growers like yourself who have been in the same situation and have got through it. Think about the choices they had, the decisions they made and how they and their vineyards recovered as a result of those decisions. How might the lessons they learned apply to you?

Gather the evidence you may need to support any claims with your insurer, such as noting dates and times of fire and activities in your vineyard, any action taken by you or government agencies, time spent fixing things up, as well as the acquisition of necessary supplies or services. Photos (including aerial or satellite), videos and receipts are all useful.

Talk to your insurer ahead of fire season to identify what they will need in the event of a claim. Add this checklist to your fire plan.

Grower experiences

There is always hope and, even if you can’t get to things quickly, it’s not going to make that much difference.

Greg Horner, Mount Bera Vineyards – Samson Flat fires

First two weeks I was in a sense of panic, but once I stopped I was able to plan. Talking to my peers. Go to Government and industry recovery workshops and seminars Listening gave me time and perspective to make the right decisions.

Mark

Your first reaction is: fix it! But that’s your emotions taking over. Watch the season unfold and the vines respond over time, rather than being too quick with the trigger.

Simon, Cudlee Creek Fires 2019

I was lucky – the vines that were burned were the ones with eutypa. In the long run I’ll have a better vineyard.

Tim

Stop and remove yourself from the smoking ruins and think about your long-term vision.

Tom, Cudlee Creek Fires 2019

Follow up care - the rest of the growing season

We understand that as a grower, you’re keen to know how quickly you can get back into full production, but it’s important to step back and think carefully about the best plan of action going forwards. It’s going to take a few weeks before your vines start to shoot (or not) and you can see what you’ve got to work with.

Should you cut back dead or damaged vines?

No, not yet. Delay your final damage assessment to at least eight weeks after the fire. Give your vines as much time as possible to respond. You need a very clear picture of viable wood, buds and shoots before you decide on your plan of action.

AWRI research completed in a Pyrenees vineyard after a 2014 fire showed there was a significant difference between the expected and actual damage to vines between visual inspections that took place between 10 days and eight weeks after the fire. Giving the vines time to recover in the immediate weeks after being exposed to a fire is going to potentially change what you decide to do with your vineyard going forwards. Also, lessons leaned following the 2019 Cudlee Creek fires showed that vines with slight to moderate damage fully recovered within one to two seasons.

Should I remove any regrowth?

However untidy it looks, leave all fresh growth on your vines. This will maximise the opportunity for vines to build carbohydrate reserves for next season’s regrowth and grape production.

Resist the temptation to go through your vineyard and chop out apparently ‘dead’ wood or select shoots for retraining before you have the full picture.

Growers and researchers tried this approach after the 2019 Adelaide Hills fires. The vines pruned and retrained mid-season recovered no better and yielded no more fruit in the following vintages than those that were left alone until winter pruning. Getting in early (before winter) could just cost you unnecessary wages or cause you to miss the best recovery option.

The reality is that at this point, you may not know which wood or buds are still viable. New growth can appear immediately after a fire but then fizzle out and die because internal damage to the trunk or cordons is stopping water and nutrients from flowing around the vine. If you prune too early, you could potentially make poor choices about what is living and capable of a full recovery, and what isn’t.

Should I remove fruit?

Removing fruit is an option and may provide benefit by diverting the vines’ energy away from ripening fruit to growth and recovery for the following year. Whether or not you choose this option will depend on the cost involved and whether the fruit is worth saving, or if it is so impacted by smoke that it is unusable.

What else can you do in the lead up to dormancy to rescue next year’s vintage?

Any new growth will need all the help it can get. Maintain soil moisture levels for active growth and monitor the foliage of recovering vines carefully for fertiliser needs, and pests and diseases. In other words, continue normal operational management of the vines and treat as usual. Even when the forthcoming season's crop is lost, it is essential to maintain the long-term health of the vines.

Can I clean up around the vineyard?

You may be able to take advantage of community volunteer and government-provided resources to help you in the weeks following the fire. It’s a great opportunity to clean out burned and unusable infrastructure, replace fences, etc. You’ve got a huge job ahead of you – use any help on offer that you can.

TAKE CARE — it’s easy to knock off and damage viable buds and shoots when pulling broken trellis wire and posts out of a row of burned vines. Try and avoid the vine area until you are clear on what’s viable and how you’re going to rework it going forwards.

RUBBISH REMOVAL

Separate out fire-damaged posts, wire and driplines and stockpile or dispose of them responsibly.

CCA posts

Ash from burnt CCA -treated vineyard posts is highly toxic. Do not attempt to clean it up without first getting specialist advice.

What to do with old CCA posts?

Plastic lines

Many irrigation line suppliers now have recycling options for old and damaged plastic pipes. Talk to yours before deciding what to do.

Recycling of old plastic irrigation line

Metal and wire

Most canopy and fencing wires can be recycled. Contact your local scrap metal merchant or council for details.

Long-term vineyard recovery plan

What have you got to work with? How to quantify the fire damage.

How to complete a visual assessment

Thoroughly assessing the impact of fire on the vineyard (mild, moderate or severe) will help you decide what to do next. This includes how best to restore your vineyard and whether replanting is the appropriate option. Objectively quantifying the extent of the damage will also be useful in dealings with grape purchasers and insurance companies.

Vineyard variability, combined with uneven fire impact, can mean that the level of damage will vary between individual vines within a vineyard.

The following key steps can be used to assess the fire damage in your vineyard:

Wait at least eight weeks after the fire before taking the time to complete this exercise,
Refer to these guidelines to score the level of damage for each vine (mild, moderate, severe),
Record the damage in an Excel spreadsheet,
Overlay your spreadsheet onto a vineyard map.

Watch this webinar for details on how to complete a visual damage assessment.

Technology available to help you

Some tech providers offer a service to rapidly and objectively map fire damage in a vineyard, using high resolution satellite imagery.

Find out more here:

Grape Assess

Grape Assess is an App for recording vine disease and disorders. Developed by the University of Adelaide with Wine Australia funding, you can use it for monitoring and recording a range of vine diseases and disorders, including fire damage. Currently available for Apple iPhone devices, with access via Android currently under negotiation.

Just a single tap records both exact location and vine fire damage score.

Learn more

Rescue or replant – what’s your best option?

Once you have assessed the damage and the vines have reached dormancy, it’s time to take action. Your decision on whether to rescue or replant will likely aim to:

get your vineyard back to full health and productivity as soon as possible
return to consistent vigour and ripening capacity across each block.

It may well be worth sacrificing production in the short-term, to ensure your vines are healthy and well-established for the long run. If it’s an older vineyard, this may be an opportunity to critically assess the vineyard viability, profitability and other production issues, such as block performance, varietal desirability and suitability, and incidence of trunk disease. A change in business tactics may better address the challenges presented now and in the future.

Factors to think about

1

How badly the vineyard is damaged.
2

Contracted fruit or own winery.
3

Health and productivity of the vineyard before the fire.
4

Condition of your infrastructure.
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Variety and clone.
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Rootstocks or own roots.
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Costs vs benefits of each option.
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Appetite for risk and uncertainty.

If the majority of the vines and infrastructure are severely damaged, you may decide that replanting is your only option.

If your fruit is contracted for pre-agreed tonnage and quality, you may have fewer options than if you’re growing grapes for your own winery where you can be flexible with the wine you choose to produce. Have a chat with your contracted winery about their plans for the current vintage and going forwards.

If your vines were struggling with trunk disease or to grow the tonnage and quality you needed before the fire, this may be a good time to cut your losses and replant.

Posts, trellising and irrigation infrastructure are all costly to replace. If it was nearing the end of its life before the fire, this may be an opportunity for a fresh start. Rebuilding infrastructure or your vineyard also presents the opportunity to design infrastructure to take advantage of any new management practices and technology proven to reduce costs (for example water use and disease management) or increase yield or quality.

Are you getting the best price for your fruit and producing a reliable vintage? This could be a good opportunity to replant with a grape variety in higher demand or attracting better prices, or to swap to one that has proven to cope better with changing weather events such as drought, summer rains and frosts.

Whether you have invested in rootstocks and the location of the fire damage relative to the graft union (above or below) may also impact your decisions.

Bringing a mix of dead, damaged and healthy vines back to full production takes time and effort. Managing a vineyard where the vines have variable vigour and ripening capacity can also be difficult. The availability of skilled labour and the cost of that labour, as well as your financial resources, will be an important factor.

From a production perspective, a replanted vineyard will typically be 2 – 2.5 years behind one that has been rescued, but in the long run it may yield more profit from the time and money invested. Some estimates suggest that you may need an additional 20 per cent performance from a new vineyard over the next 30 years to cover the cost of replanting. You’ll need to do your own sums based on your own business and current costs. Download an example of replacement cost modelling

At the end of the day, we all cope with risk differently. Ultimately your decision will be based on your appetite for risk and whether your business can absorb uncertainty.

Bringing a damaged vineyard back to full production

If you have decided that the best plan of action for your business is to rescue the vines you have, it’s time to reach for your snips and chainsaw.

Replacing dead vines in a row of otherwise healthy or recoverable vines

If the root system of a vine has been damaged by radiant heat, it will most likely be dead and need replacing. This can be done in two ways, depending on the health and vigour of the vines next to the dead vine.

Layering

If you can pull down a cane from an adjacent vine to act as a ‘nurse’ shoot, this is the best option.

The live, vigorous vine already has an established root system and canopy infrastructure that will feed the development of the new vine during winter and in the following growing seasons.

As a result, the replacement vine will have the same vigour and ripening capacity as the existing vines much sooner than a freshly planted rootling.

Watch a video of step-by-step instructions (from 25mins)

If the vine you want to use as the source of your nurse shoot is dead above ground, but the root system and stump are healthy enough to push up suckers, use the strongest sucker to train up to the wire to replace the vine that is suckering and use a lower sucker to layer across to replace the adjacent vine (that is completely dead).

If the adjacent vine is not vigorous enough to support a 'nurse' shoot, you can use one from further down the row.

Planting a one-year-old rootling

If your vines are on rootstocks and a vine (above and below the graft) is completely dead, planting a one-year-old rootling will be the best solution for replacing it.

The same principles apply to replacing single vines as planting out a whole vineyard. Watch Nick Dry (Foundation Viticulture) explain the steps you should take and the questions you should ask the nursery to ensure your replanting material is as healthy as possible. Given the time lag between ordering and delivery of planting material, you may not be able to replace the vines for a couple of seasons.

How to prune fire-damaged vines for best recovery

Mild to moderate fire damage

Studies in the Adelaide Hills have demonstrated that the most cost-effective management practice in the winter following a fire is to maintain spur pruning. The key is to identify the remaining viable buds on the vine structure (which will show themselves with time). Consider leaving more nodes to increase yield in the next season (around 150% of the normal target) to compensate for the impact of fire on the permanent cordon.

It’s worth considering taking two years to rebuild the best vine infrastructure you can. Whilst it will sacrifice yield in the short term, it will set your vines up for higher yields and quality for the years to come.

Conversion to cane pruning or trunk replacement should only be necessary where there are other advantages, such as the influence on grape quality (e.g. bunch architecture). In vineyards where cordon decline and trunk disease was impacting production before the fire, trunk replacement after a fire is justified, particularly as the crop in the following season has already been impacted.

Severe damage

If you've waited for at least eight weeks to evaluate the response of the vineyard and there is no evidence of viable cordons but healthy roots are apparent, ‘beheading’ in winter may be the best option for severely damaged vines.

This approach can be used for whole blocks, rows or singular vines, depending on your plan of action.

So long as the cut is above the graft site, this applies to vines on own roots or rootstocks.

Think about the size of roots in a five-year-old vine compared to a one-year-old rootling. This method takes advantage of the larger, healthy root system of your existing vines to push loads of nutrients and energy up into the new shoots bursting from the trunk. This allows a relatively quick recovery of the vine infrastructure and ensures the vines return to similar vigour and ripening capacity as the less damaged vines in the row or block as soon as possible.

Protecting against trunk disease is critical

All cuts over 2cm should be protected.

Monitor the cuts for two weeks and replenish any cuts that are weeping or cracking.

Remind yourself how to protect your vines against grapevine trunk disease (PDF).

Ongoing management

If you’re keen to get back to full production as soon as possible, it’s vitally important to monitor your recovering vines carefully and frequently and to quickly manage any threats to their health and vigour.

Complete a training pass every two weeks during the growing season following recue.
Manage vine vigour carefully to ensure energy is being directed into the most useful parts of the vine
Roll out your usual pest and disease management program

Ensure spray passes cover all the new growth on the vine (from the ground upwards) not just the canopy.

Starting over - replanting or reworking the whole vineyard

Wine Australia and other partners have funded the development of resources to help you make the best decisions for your business should you need to cut your losses and replant the vineyard or block after fire.

Whilst it’s a tough place to be, a carefully thought-out plan will help you make the best of a bad situation and set your business up for success.

Watch Nick Dry (Foundation Viticulture) explain the steps you should take and the questions you should ask the nursery to ensure your replanting material is as healthy as possible. Given the time lag between ordering and delivery of planting material, you may not be able to replace all vines for a couple of seasons.

Download the step-by-step guide: Options for vineyard reinvestment: reworking, replanting and top-grafting (PDF)

Case study

Download the case study for Mount Bera Vineyards 2015 (PDF)

Q&A

Are there any non-destructive ways of assessing cambium viability?

No - not yet.

Can I consolidate rows through replanting?

Really only viable for high value vineyards.

Do I still need to revisit newly cut trunks for a couple of weeks to check wound dressing – is this still necessary for the Trichoderma method?

No, so long as the protection is active.

If I decide to cut the trunk off at ground level, when would be the latest that I should do it to ensure I have good lignification for the new shoots?

The current recommendation is that you leave all new shoots on the vine right up to winter and prune back in winter, leaving the vine to take advantage of the full length of next year’s growing season to regrow its vine architecture. While some people have tried cleaning off excess shoots and retraining selected shoots after the fire, it’s unlikely that there is sufficient time left in the season for the selected shoots to reach a viable level of lignin before winter. Trials following the Adelaide Hills 2019 fires indicated that there was no advantage to taking this early approach and there was the potential to waste money doing the work.

Watch this video to learn more

Is wire-high training a good idea for new rootlings to replace dead vines in the row?

No, this is not recommended any more.

Should I cut vines off at ground level immediately after the fire to encourage sucker shoots?

No, don’t rush into anything. Evidence suggests that you’re better waiting to see how the vines respond before deciding on the best route forwards. At least 8 weeks, but until winter if you can.

VSP trained vines – instead of cutting the trunk, could you cut the cordon off back to the head, forcing latent buds to burst at the head of the vine?

This is an option, but what you need to understand is that if there is damage on the trunk, you’ll need to cut below the damage.

What if my vines are grafted onto rootstocks?

Less options available – can’t train suckers which shoot from below ground if below the ground. Option to regraft if rootstock still healthy and unaffected by fire.

Will leaving dead or dying wood in the vineyard after fire increase the chance of disease and pests taking up residence?

Possibly. It’d be a case of weighing up the potential vs the need to wait and monitor your vines.

Take care of yourself

Walking into a vineyard after a fire has been through can be confronting. Physical and emotional exhaustion from fighting the fire will make matters worse.

A calmer, clearer head will help you see a way forward. Talk to your friends and colleagues, and if you’re not sure where to turn next please reach out for professional support.

Lifeline 13 11 14
Beyond Blue 1300 224 636
SANE Australia 1800 187 263