Grape vines can be pretty expensive to buy, and when you get into the large volumes that you need for a vineyard, it can get downright expensive. I lower my vineyard costs by starting my own cuttings. For years I made cuttings as a hobby by taking dormant wood in the fall and rooting it in spring. The problem is it takes a pretty long time from cutting to rooted vine (over a year).
With this method you can get new vines rooted in the same season, in fact in just a couple of weeks, and you don’t need fancy misting equipment. One variety in particular, Norton (Cynthiana), is notorious for being difficult to start from dormant cuttings. Norton is a variety that does really well in our heavy clay soil, and it works really well with organic methods because, even under high disease pressure, it has beautiful clusters every season with no pesticides, chemical or organic. In this video I take cuttings of Norton and show how easy it is.