Case study: Klug winery

South Styria is a fascinating wine region, full of impressive landscapes and outstanding wines. Klug winery (LINK) manages around eight hectares of vineyards in the Eichberg-Trautenburg district. Most of the vines grow on extremely steep inclines, with gradients of up to 40 percent. This requires a great deal of hard work when it comes to pruning the vines and harvesting the grapes. The terroir comprises a mixture of clay and marl, which is excellent at storing moisture. When this is combined with the warm, humid Mediterranean climate, cool nights, excellent precipitation levels and extended growing season into autumn, the result is the finest conditions for high-quality wines.

One of the reasons that the winery’s owner, Rene Klug, switched from conventional axial blowers to the high-performance turbines from VICAR back in 2018 is the time savings they offer. He used to need one and a half days to spray the eight-hectare area, travelling up and down every single vine row. By moving to the VICAR radial blower, he has managed to reduce this to around six hours. The high air speed provided by the powerful turbines facilitates a stronger penetration of the plants in the adjacent vine row, and a better adsorption of the pesticide on the second row. As such, Klug now only needs to travel up and down alternate vine rows to achieve almost 100 percent pesticide coverage on both sides of a vine row. Only needing to travel up alternate vine rows has cut the time required by around half.

For the vines growing on very steep slopes, Klug simply needs to adjust the speed of the tractor so he accelerates slightly when travelling uphill and decelerates downhill to ensure the same quantity of pesticide is spread based on this average speed. Rene Klug is like a “VICAR pioneer” in the region of South Styria. After his investment in the powerful turbines and subsequent huge time savings, more and more vintners followed suit. “Most of the wineries in our region are a similar size to our family winery. So we all face the same challenges. Besides the time savings, I am also really impressed by the excellent protection that the fruit gets against fungi and other diseases. We can clearly see that the high air speed means that the pesticide residues penetrate right into the heart of the vine structure. The investment in the crop protection technology was higher than it would have been from other manufacturers, but I am convinced that the investment is worth it over the long term – it saves you an enormous amount of time”, explains Rene Klug.

“Most of the wineries in our region are a similar size to our family winery. So we all face the same challenges. Besides the time savings, I am also really impressed by the excellent protection that the fruit gets against fungi and other diseases. We can clearly see that the high air speed means that the pesticide residues penetrate right into the heart of the vine structure. The investment in the crop protection technology was higher than it would have been from other manufacturers, but I am convinced that the investment is worth it over the long term – it saves you an enormous amount of time”, explains Rene Klug.

“The casing is fully cast in aluminium to prevent any hairline cracks appearing as a result of vibrations caused by the high turbine speeds. This requires expensive moulds, which cost more than in other systems. But they also last longer and hold their value” , explains Timo Sexauer from VICAR.

Related links: www.weingut-klug.at