Late Pruning: The Art of Patience & The Taste of the Wildning

Prologue: Winter in the Mountains

Winter in Samos is nothing like the sunny scenes on postcards. In the mountains above Platanos village, the air is cold and damp, penetrating your clothes. Tucked away from sight, there’s a vineyard that was left alone for years. It’s a hidden place, showing its promise only to those willing to wait and pay attention to what nature has to say.

This is our second year working this land. From the beginning, we made one clear choice: Late Pruning. While others finish pruning by January, we wait. We let the cold pass, the sap settle, and the vines rest deeply.

The Sleeping Giant: Regeneration without Crutches

Bringing an abandoned vineyard back to life is not romantic. It’s a slow, tough process. The vines had grown wild, and weeds had taken over. We could have used chemical fertilisers or “Bio” additives that claim to work wonders, but at Philia Winery, we don’t believe in those methods.

We think the vine needs to struggle.

It should push its roots deep into the rocky soil with quartz veins to find its own food. That’s how the Terroir shows its true character. If we make things too easy, the vine becomes weak, and the grapes

lose their unique taste. We want grapes that come from hard work, not shortcuts.

The Solitude of the Pioneer

In small rural communities, criticism is common. The locals watched our different ways and were sceptical. They asked, "Why don't you add fertilizer? It will wither." and "Why are you pruning now? It's too late."

People are often afraid of what’s different. Habit makes it easy to reach for a solution from the agronomist’s shelf. We don’t blame the locals. They are caught in a system in which European policies have led farmers to focus on subsidies rather than caring for the land. When you don’t depend on your own harvest to live, you lose the real meaning of farming. Their reaction is just a way to protect what they know.

Sculpting on Wood

To us, pruning isn’t just a task. It’s like surgery and art together. By pruning late, we delay bud break, which helps protect the vines from spring frosts that can ruin a whole year’s work overnight. For a month, we worked through cold, mud, and tough wood. Every cut mattered for the plant’s future. We had to choose which canes to keep and how to guide the sap. We’re rebuilding the vine’s shape while paying tribute to the wildness it gained during years of neglect.

Fuel from the Kitchen Lab

After a month of hard work, it was time to celebrate. Food in the field is more than just a quick sandwich; it’s part of the whole process. Samos has many wild boars, which some see as pests, but we see them as a gift. In my Kitchen Lab, I used this great game meat to make wild boar sausages by hand.

We lit a fire using the very vine branches we had just pruned. Nothing is wasted. The smoke from the vines infused the meat with the vineyard's aroma. But the body needs more than meat to endure the cold.

• For a drink, I made hot tea from wild herbs I gathered on the mountain slopes—sage, sideritis, and other plants that grow in the same soil as our grapes.

• The Broth: To restore our strength, I brought a thermos full of hot broth made from wild chicory (agrioradikia) and lemon, prepared earlier at the Lab. A dark, bitter, restorative elixir that cleanses the blood and warms the soul.

This is the taste of completion. A rustic meal. This is what completion tastes like. A simple, hearty meal that links our hard work to the joy of eating. It’s when the team feels like family, and tiredness fades with the first bite of smoked wild boar.d is "shorn" and ready. We do not know what the vintage will bring. We do not know if it will require intervention (always natural) or how the plants will respond to our care. In nature, there are no guarantees. There is only hope and patience. One thing is certain: something is changing in Platanos. And perhaps, seeing the results in the glass, some of those who criticise us today might look at their own vineyards with different eyes tomorrow