What Happens To Old Vines When A Vineyard Is Replanted?

When a vineyard is replanted, the old vines need a new home. Decades of growth, including roots, trunks, arms, and canes, must be removed, collected, and managed. The way a vineyard handles this woody material says a great deal about its approach to land stewardship and environmental responsibility.

In this guide, we explain what typically happens to old vines and pruning cuttings, why the traditional approach of burning is increasingly being replaced, and how modern vineyards turn what was once considered waste into a renewable resource.

Do Vines Have a Lifespan?

Yes, although grapevines (Latin: Vitis vinifera) can live for an extraordinarily long time. Some old-vine plots in Europe are more than a century old and still producing wine. But what is the lifespan of a vine in commercial terms? That depends on several factors:

• The grape variety and rootstock used
• Soil type and drainage
• Climate and annual rainfall
• Vineyard management practices over the vine’s life

Most commercial vines today are grafted onto Phylloxera-resistant rootstocks. According to Caroline Gilby MW writing for The Wine Society, this grafting process weakens the vine slightly, limiting the commercially viable lifespan to around 25 to 30 years. Yield tends to drop as vines age, and once crop levels fall below a viable level, replanting becomes the practical choice.

That said, with care and commitment, vines can be nursed well beyond their productive peak. The Old Vine Conference, which works to document and preserve old vine heritage globally, uses the vine age categories first established by the Barossa Valley Old Vine Charter in Australia:

Older vines tend to produce lower yields but, in many cases, grapes with greater concentration and complexity. This is one reason some estates choose to keep ageing vines going rather than replanting, even at reduced productivity. However, for most working vineyards, the balance between fruit quality and economically viable yield tips towards replanting somewhere in the 25 to 40-year range. When that decision is made, the question becomes: what happens to all that removed material?

What Is Grubbing Up, and How Much Material Does It Produce?

The process of removing established vines is known as grubbing up. It typically involves specialist machinery that uproots each vine, lifting the root ball and the entire above-ground structure, before the material is pushed into piles along the vineyard rows for collection.

The volume of woody material this generates often surprises people. A single established vine can have a substantial root system and trunk accumulated over decades. Scale that across hundreds or thousands of vines and the total weight quickly becomes significant, often running to tens of tonnes on a mid-sized estate.

On top of replanting material, every working vineyard also produces significant quantities of cut cane and branches each winter through routine pruning. On a large estate, this annual waste can run to several tonnes.

Why Burning Is Problematic

For most of viticulture’s history, the default answer to surplus vine material was fire. Pruning cuttings and grubbed-up vines were piled and burned on site: a fast, low-cost clearance method requiring no specialist equipment or logistics. In some wine regions, field burning remains a common practice today.

Advocates sometimes note that ash can return trace minerals to the soil. But the environmental cost is significant:

• All stored carbon is released immediately as CO₂, with no energy value recovered
• Smoke, particulate matter, and other pollutants affect local air quality and human health
• An energy-rich material is destroyed rather than put to use
• Any opportunity to give the material a second life is permanently lost

In England and Wales, open burning of crop residues is regulated under the Crop Residues (Burning) Regulations 1993. Responsible land managers are increasingly moving away from the practice, not only for compliance reasons but also because better alternatives are now widely available.

Sustainable Alternatives

There are several approaches to sustainably managing vine and pruning waste. The right choice depends on the scale of the operation and the type of material involved:

• Biomass recycling is the most practical route for large-scale replanting material. Woody plant material is collected and sent to a specialised facility, where it is shredded, processed, and converted into fuel as wood chips or pellets. These can then be used in industrial boilers or renewable energy systems, reducing dependency on fossil fuels and treating vineyard waste as a resource within a circular energy system.
• Mulching and composting suit lighter annual pruning waste. Cuttings are shredded on site and incorporated back into the soil as organic matter, improving soil structure and supporting biodiversity. Care is needed to avoid returning diseased material, and this approach is generally less practical for the heavier wood of a full replant.
• Biochar production is an emerging option in which vine material is heated in a low-oxygen environment to produce a stable, carbon-rich material that can be added back into the soil as a long-term carbon store. Research into biochar’s role in vineyard soil health and carbon sequestration is active and growing, though it is not yet widely adopted at a commercial scale.

How Vine Waste Management Differs: Cool and Warm Climates

The challenge of managing vine and pruning waste is universal, but the approach varies considerably between wine-growing regions. Climate affects not only how vines grow, but how their woody material behaves once removed and which disposal methods are most practical.

In warm wine-growing regions such as southern Spain, Sicily, California, and South Australia:

• Vine wood desiccates quickly after cutting, historically making open burning fast and straightforward
• Burning pruning waste remains a tradition in some areas, though this is changing under regulatory and environmental pressure
• California’s San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District has introduced strict restrictions on agricultural burning in response to public health concerns
• In Australia, smoke taint from fires is a serious threat to wine quality, as smoke compounds can be absorbed through grape skins and carry through into the finished wine
• Drier conditions make on-site composting relatively straightforward, and some warm-climate estates are pioneering biochar as a soil amendment

In cool wine-growing regions such as England, northern France, and Germany:

• Higher rainfall and lower temperatures mean removed vine material retains moisture for longer, making on-site burning less effective
• Wetter conditions also make on-site composting more complex to manage without spreading vine disease
• Biomass recycling, where material is taken to a specialist off-site facility, is a more consistently practical solution regardless of the weather
• The English wine industry has seen growing adoption of biomass recycling as the sector matures and sustainability commitments increase
• Open burning of crop residues has been regulated under the Crop Residues (Burning) Regulations 1993 since the early 1990s

What Is Biomass Recycling and How Does It Work?

Biomass recycling is the process of converting organic plant material into renewable energy. For vineyard waste, the journey from brush pile to fuel typically involves the following stages:

1. Collection and transport: Removed vines and pruning cuttings are collected from the vineyard rows and taken to a specialist biomass-processing facility.
2. Shredding: The woody material is chopped into smaller, more uniform pieces, increasing surface area, speeding up drying, and making the material easier to handle.
3. Drying: Freshly cut wood contains significant moisture, which reduces its energy value as a fuel. The shredded material is dried to bring the moisture content down to an efficient level.
4. Sorting: Non-organic debris, such as stones, wire ties, or metal staples, is removed before processing continues.
5. Compressing and pelletising: The dried, sorted material is compressed into wood chips or pellets, which are denser, easier to store, and more consistent as a fuel source than loose chippings.

The resulting biomass fuel is used in industrial boilers, district heating systems, and domestic wood-burning stoves, displacing fossil fuels such as coal and gas in the wider energy supply.

Why Biomass Recycling Is Better Than Burning on Site

This is a fair question, as both options ultimately release the carbon stored in the plant material as CO₂. The crucial distinction lies in what happens in between. The key difference is:

• Biogenic carbon (from vines) was absorbed recently from the atmosphere and is part of a short natural cycle
• Fossil carbon has been locked underground for thousands of years and adds genuinely new carbon to the atmospheric system when burned
• Burning vine biomass as fuel releases biogenic carbon, but only after displacing an equivalent quantity of fossil fuel that would otherwise have been burned
• Open burning on site produces no useful energy and releases the same carbon with nothing to show for it

This is why sustainably sourced biomass is recognised as a renewable energy source by bodies including the International Energy Agency and the UK government, provided it comes from responsibly managed land with short supply chains.

How Bolney Wine Estate Approaches Vine Recycling

As part of Bolney’s long-term vineyard renewal programme in West Sussex, we use biomass recycling to manage all removed vine and pruning material, working with a local specialist just a few miles from the estate. For a detailed look at how we handled the first phase of our replanting project, including the volumes collected and the environmental outcomes, read our vine recycling project update.

See Sustainable Viticulture in Action

Our vineyard tours give visitors insight into how we care for the land at every stage, from planting and pruning to what we do with what’s left over. Bolney Wine Estate is open year-round, and tours run throughout the year.

Book a vineyard tour and tasting at Bolney Wine Estate and see sustainable viticulture in practice.