The VINE

The VINE
The Ampelography is the study of vine growing, which, in a broader sense, is defined as a climbing shrub with long branches called flexible branches comprising thousands of varieties, of which at least 5,000 of them are cataloged and less than 50 their interest to wine lovers.
reach a good wine.

Despite its immense variety, we highlight two major species of plants producing grape:
The European, the botanical genus Vitis vinifera and specific name, is a vine that produces fruit with sugar and acidic elements in ideal proportions to
The American species, whose unpleasant aroma (foxy - "fox wet") and low alcohol fermentation reached at its limit their use in wine production, has its fruit used as table grapes or for the production of wines of low quality. The importance of this species stems from its application in grafting, for the strengthening of vines, since there are more than a century is not more planting in ungrafted, ie, left side is the practice of removing the stick of a oldest vine and stick it directly into the ground to get a new plan, adopting a technique called "horse".
The grafting emerged as the keeper of the existence of fine wines, to ensure the emergence of hybrid vines to replace the original decimated by phylloxera plague. In the late nineteenth century, between the years 1865 and 1885, a tiny insect, measuring less than a millimeter and baptized with the name Phyloxera vastratrix, was responsible for the complete change of the European wine industry, since that continent devastated the vineyards . As Vitis vinifera is vulnerable to the attack of this pest, created the practice of planting a resistant American vine that after a year, the stem is cut in order to do the graft of a stick or twigs of the European vine. So if you can a vine immune to phylloxera and produces good fruit for winemaking, the American rootstock (horse) functioning as simple conductor vine sap and European (Knight) contributing to the genetic part to ensure the quality of the grape and therefore the wine.
The only vine bears good fruit for winemaking after the fourth or fifth year of its planting, producing for over 25 or thirty years. In Chile, exceptionally, there are still fertile vines centuries, thanks to the special soil and because the Chilean vineyards were not affected by phylloxera, which were protected by excessively dry climate and the barrier of the Andes.