Common Trellis Systems and Choosing the Right One

Jensen Precast trellis system pictured in a vineyard

Photo Credit: Jensen Precast

By: Alyssa L. Ochs

In the modern vineyard, trellis systems consist of posts, wires or other structures used to support grapevines and help them grow. The concept of a trellis is relatively simple, but choosing the right one could mean the difference between a successful harvest and plants struggling to survive.

We connected with industry experts and vineyards with effective trellis strategies to share insights about the options available and how to choose the best one for your vineyard.

The Importance of Trellises

  Trellises provide structural support for the vines and fruit in a way sturdy enough to sustain significant wind. They also help vines get adequate sunlight for photosynthesis while ripening and developing sugars for high-quality fruit. An effective trellis system helps circulate the air around plants and reduce disease risk without excessive use of herbicides and pesticides.

  Meanwhile, trellises help reduce the labor needed for weeding because the vines are lifted off the ground, making weeding tasks easier. Spraying the vines with a trellis is easier because the structural support shapes the canopy. At harvest, a trellis makes it easier to pull grapes by hand, reducing labor needs and costs.

  Overall, a trellis is essential to effective vineyard design and can ensure a vineyard’s success or failure. By supporting the vine and fruit in a way plants cannot naturally do, trellises help vineyard owners produce healthy fruit and improve the quantity and quality of their grapes.

Types of Trellis Systems

  Vineyards can experiment with various trellis systems based on conditions and personal preferences. Vertical shoot positioning (VSP) involves a single-curtain system with movable catch wires and a stationary cordon wire. This system trains the vines to grow vertically and is ideal for narrow-row spacings. VSP systems often have four to six wire levels, making pruning and harvesting easier. However, installing them can be costly and require maintenance beyond other trellising methods.

  Another trellis option is the Geneva double curtain (GDC), which incorporates a double canopy system and canopies with bilateral cordons. This method ensures the vines get adequate light and canopies are divided horizontally for shoot positioning.

  Vineyards can also try the four-arm kniffin (FAK) method for trellising, which involves a four-arm, quadrilateral cane system with equal spacing on the wire. Fruit canes grow between the arms, making it ideal for small vineyards. A FAK with a three-wire trellis system is easy to build and cost-effective. It is also versatile and can adapt to various row spacings.

  Top wire cordon (TWC) trellis systems work for flat sites and have cross arms, posts and top wires strung from the post’s bottom to the arms’ ends. This design can accommodate row spacings from about three to 10 feet and is ideal for vines growing downward. However, they offer less overall support and can damage wind and sun.

  There’s also the umbrella kniffin (UK) method, which uses two wires at 45-degree angles to grow vines between them. Vineyards in warm climates with high winds often find success with this method. It’s simple and easy to install but takes up more space than other systems, and weed control can be an issue.

  High-wire cordon trellis systems work well with cold-hardy grapes and require minimal labor and investment. This system involves one to three wires, with the top wire four to six feet from the ground. Pruning is easy with this system, which allows for vineyard mechanization more than more complex trellis systems.

What Vineyards Are Using

  Four Daughters Vineyard in Spring Valley, Minnesota uses two different trellis systems in its vineyard, primarily a mid-wire cordon with VSP-trained vines and some lyre trellis. Four Daughters is a winery, cidery, restaurant and event center on a sprawling estate with a six-acre vineyard in rural southeastern Minnesota.

  “We are working to retrain the vines on the lyre system to VSP and convert the trellis as well,” Hannah Hanlon, Four Daughters’ winemaker and vineyard manager, told The Grapevine Magazine. Hanlon said that the mid-wire cordon with VSP works well for the vineyard and the vines.

  “Many vines are best suited to a high-cordon; however, working on high-cordon systems is really hard on the back, and those vines may not be as perfect as VSP, but they will produce and grow just fine,” Hanlon said. “Similarly, the lyre system we have is hard to hedge and hard to penetrate the center of the canopy with sprays; VSP would solve those issues. We feel fortunate that our site is on limestone and less vigorous than most in Minnesota, and we can grow a double cordon VSP vine without unmanageable vigor. Vines are incredibly versatile and resilient. Finding perfection is not my goal in the trellising and training in the vineyard; my goal is to keep the vines happy enough and keep them easy to be worked on.”

  Concerning trellis-related supplies, Hanlon from Four Daughters Vineyard shared, “I use grow tubes from MDT to grow up vines when I need to retrain trunks or replant; this protects them from herbicide and rabbits. With these, I use bamboo poles to hold them in place. I use rubber black ties to hold the vines onto the trellis system, a Maxtapener for the growing season tying and Felco pruners, saws and loppers for pruning. We net our vines and use clips to hold those nets in place to protect them from birds. I have an herbicide sprayer, fungicide sprayer and tractor. We have a tractor-mounted hedger. For repairing the trellises, I have a crimping tool, strainer handle, hammer and extra trellising supplies.”

  Hanlon recommends the Minnesota Grape Growers Association’s book Growing Grapes in Minnesota (available for free download) to compare the costs of different trellis systems.

  Meanwhile, in New Haven, Vermont, Lincoln Peak Vineyard has most of its vineyard trained on Geneva double curtain (GDC) but also has some high wire. Kevin Bednar and his wife, Nichole Bambacigno, own Lincoln Peak and took over management of the vineyard earlier this year.

  “In these systems, the fruiting wire is six feet off the ground, and we encourage the shoots to grow downwards as the season progresses,” Bednar told The Grapevine Magazine. “These systems typically are spur-pruned and lay down cordons for multiple years, but we opt for cane pruning, replacing the canes on the fruiting wire every year. This allows us to eliminate potentially diseased or cold damaged wood.”

  Bednar shared that the systems they use now at Lincoln Peak allow vigorous hybrids plenty of room to grow, balancing the vegetative and reproductive growth. He explained that these varieties struggle to grow upright, so their trellis system fits their tendencies more than VSP and allows the vine to support a heavier crop load.

  “The downward growth pattern of the shoots leads to great sun and wind exposure in the fruit zone, leading to better ripeness and good development of fruiting buds,” Bednar said. “I certainly think VSP and other upright trellis systems are nicer to look at, and, having had more experience working with VSP, it seems to me that you have more control over undervine growth and fruit zone exposure throughout the season.”

  Bednar from Lincoln Peak explained that a vineyard needs to purchase end posts and anchors, row posts, wire, crossbars and a post hole digger to construct a trellis.

  “All trellising systems have the same number of posts, so it really comes down to wire and crossbars,” Bednar said. “The more wires, the more expensive the system. High wire is typically just one wire, GDC is two and VSP can be up to seven.”

Recommended Vineyard Trellis Products 

  One company specializing in vineyard trellis systems is Jensen Precast, based in Reno, Nevada and one of America’s largest, independently-owned precast concrete businesses. George Kehagias, Jensen’s director of product management, told The Grapevine Magazine that their most popular products for vineyards are the Harvest Pillar brand 3”x3”x8’ concrete line posts, 4”x4”x8’ concrete end posts, wire clips and end post bracketry.

  “Our wire clips are popular because they’re very quick to install,” Kehagias said. “We also offer a variety of easy-to-mount cross arm bracketry, depending on the type of trellising in the vineyard.”

  Kehagias explained that the method for trellising determines what supplies are required, but concrete posts require similar components to wood and steel.

  “The vineyard will need clips to attach the wire to the post, which Harvest Pillar supplies, and then wire to attach the fruit to,” Kehagias said. “In general, vineyards use anchors to secure the fruiting wire to the ground. With Harvest Pillar, the anchors and wire used are interchangeable between wood, steel and concrete. The wire clips used on concrete are similar in function but slightly different in form from clips used on wood and steel. Our customers also typically attached irrigation drip lines to the trellis. With concrete, this method can be done using the same accessories as used on wood and steel trellis.”

  He shared that concrete posts are the most cost-effective solution when you factor in the replacement costs of damaged posts and optimized spacing for strengths. Jensen Precast has a calculator on its website that compares wood, steel and concrete costs per acre.

  Headquartered in Aurora, Illinois, Gripple, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of wire joiners and tensioners for the agricultural market. Its highest-selling products in the vineyard market are the GP Medium, GP1 and GPak kits.

  “While the GP Medium is our best-seller, it is available in a range of sizes starting with small to medium, then large, and we even carry a jumbo option,” Rick Hermosillo, campaign marketing manager for Gripple, told The Grapevine Magazine. “The GP Medium is most often used for joining 13.5-to-10-gauge smooth trellis wire together, repairing broken or cut wires and often used at termination points around the end post. The medium is popular for its ease of use and speed of installation without drawbacks. It has an 880-pound working load and is designed with corrosive-resistant materials to last the life of the trellis wire.”

  Hermosillo explained that GP1 is another termination end option. It is designed with a flat edge, creating extra stability when using metal end posts. While the GP1 has a high load strength equivalent to the GP Medium, there is also a GP2 option for larger wire with a stronger hold at 1,320 pounds.

  “Lastly, our GPak kit — again, this comes in a range of sizes, but the most common is our GPak 3,” Hermosillo said. “It’s a ready-to-use kit with a pre-cut fused cable and a joiner. The GPak is designed as a quick installation tieback to connect your end post to your ground anchor.”

  Gripple manufactures 95 percent of the components in all its products and has released three new products to the vineyard market in the past two years. The GP90 is a cross-wire joiner, the D8 works with a 5/16-inch cable that provides a load rating of 6,170 pounds and the Anchor 5 is the largest anchor of its series to fit the most demanding trellis systems.

  Finger Lakes Trellis Supply is another company that can help if you’re in the market for a new trellis system. Based in Williamson, New York, it offers trellises, fencing, posts, wires, harvest supplies, irrigation supplies, tools, equipment and wildlife solutions.

  For vine training, Finger Lakes Trellis Supply offers a lightweight and durable MAX Tapener, four-inch KlipOn Trellis Ties and 1/4-inch stake-to-wire clips. These products provide a stable foundation for growing vines and help you save time while setting up trellises. This company also sells metal and wooden posts and accessories, plus earth anchors in various styles.

Final Words of Advice

  Hanlon from Four Daughters Vineyard & Winery advised vineyards, “Think about standing at that vine and pruning it, training it, working on it, driving down the row and harvesting the grapes. What tools you plan to use to do all of that? Choose something that is amiable to your tools and body. Bending down or reaching up to do a task for one vine is manageable, but can you do it for 1,000?”

  Bednar from Lincoln Peak advised, “Do your research and be realistic with yourself! There’s no right answer, so figure out what your short-term and long-term goals are. What’s your labor budget and access? How much mechanization do you want to do? What are your goals for fruit yield, quality and vine longevity?”

  Kehagias from Jensen Precast said, “When choosing a trellis system, one of the most important factors to be considered is the ever-increasing costs of labor resources and finding a system that, in the long run, will need minimal labor to maintain and utilize the system. We think our Harvest Pillar concrete trellis systems are the best solution.”

  Hermosillo from Gripple shared, “There are many reasons for choosing a preferred method; however, Gripple leaves it to the grower to determine which is best for their site. Gripple can improve on some of the cons to these methods are in the joining repairing and tiebacks of any design selected. One of those key benefits, besides the speed and ease of use, is the ability to tension and re-tension that wire year after year. We offer a torque tool that was engineered to complement our Gripple joiners. With this tool, it takes less than 10 seconds to add tension to a trellis line. Since most vineyards are built on many acres of land, this system can provide a significant benefit in time and labor savings.”

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