South Africa Wine Technical Yearbook 2025

SEPTEMBER

SHUTTERSTOCK

New life By Pieter Badenhorst

A – Pre-pruning In the vineyard environment, it is the action where the top part of the shoots is removed at approximately 15 cm and pulled out of the wires. It corresponds with the first two steps of 5S: “Sort” and “Set in place”. If applied to a cellar environment, it can be expressed as follows: • Go through the cellar systematically and basically bring everything that can move to one central point. • Evaluate each item and remove everything that is clearly not needed anymore. This includes notices and signage against walls. • Identify equipment or items that are only slightly damaged and can be repaired at relatively low cost. Create a list of these items and assign a person to follow up on the actions required. • Identify severely damaged equipment or items which can no longer be repaired cost-effectively. These items can possibly serve as parts for other similar equipment. Make a final decision on the future of such items and implement the plan. • Determine where the best place is to store the remaining equipment. Useful questions to ask are:

The month of September is here, and so is lovely spring! And as budding gets underway in the vineyards, it is perhaps also time to breathe new life into our cellars. To expand on the vineyard analogy: Vineyards are drastically pruned back at the start of winter. To the uninformed, this might seem like a mistake because very little remains of the vine, especially when compared to the amount of green growth during the season. However, this is exactly what is required to ensure a good crop in the following season. Vineyard pruning can be divided into three actions, namely pre-pruning, clean pruning and final pruning. Let’s look at how we can apply the principles of these three actions in the cellar environment to bring renewal there. Parallel to the three pruning actions, we will also look at possibly one of the best workplace organisation systems, namely 5S. The 5 x S’s consist of the following five steps: 1. S ort 2. S et in place 3. S hine 4. S tandardise 5. S ustain

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TECHNICAL YEARBOOK 2025