It all begins with the soil. Soil is a crucial part of winegrowing, key to managing plant cover in the vineyard and regulating the vigor of the vine.
To harness the potential of the estate’s soils, the teams at Cos take a complementary approach, combining mechanical methods with cover cropping to ensure each vine receives the right amount of nutriments and create an environment that fosters biodiversity.
Mechanical methods are implemented as early as October with buttage, or “earthing up,” when the base of each vine is covered with soil to protect it during the winter months.
In March, the vines are freed of these mounds of soil in a process known as décavaillonnage. From March to September, through the entire growth cycle of the vine, the soils at Cos are lightly ploughed and cultivated to eliminate weeds, limit the vigor of the vine, and aerate the earth to make it more permeable to water and more hospitable to various forms of life.
It is a delicate balancing act: the soil must be able to breathe in order to thrive, so these mechanical methods must be reduced to a minimum to avoid compacting the earth.
This is where the second method, cover cropping, comes in. Cover crops provide nutriments, structure, and moisture, helping to regulate the vigor of the vine at every stage of development by providing necessary competition for nutriments and water.
To establish the right equilibrium, cover cropping strategy at Cos is adapted to the specific characteristics of each plot.
Cover crops of grasses such as festuca and ray grass, with their deep roots that structure and stabilize soils, are maintained in a permanent fashion on plots that are particularly rich or humid.
Leguminous crops or grasses are planted on other plots in autumn to provide precious reserves of nitrogen, with excess nitrogen being metabolized by barley that is planted in the spring, the overall objective being to stimulate the vine so that it may realize its full potential.
Well-managed crop covers also favor richer, aerated soils with better structure that contribute to the estate’s biodiversity.
