The short pruning style allows a good ripening of the grapes.

Pruning is a fundamental task, a way of controlling the vine growth and yield and is the first step towards quality. Carried out from November to March, it is not an easy task and one man can only prune 400 to 500 vines a day.

The winter pruning is completed by the removal of the old wood which is taken off the wires, allowing the best and useful wood to be kept.
Clouds of grey smoke rise up from the vineyards as the vinegrowers burn the useless wood in metal wheelbarrows.
Then the vine has to be trained and the cane is bent and tied on the top wire.

This task is often carried out by women as it demands great dexterity : the fruiting cane must not be broken.

The vine starts to grow in March or early April, depending on the weather conditions.
A few unwanted non-fruit bearing shoots start to grow at the bottom of the vinestock. If they were left unchecked, they could encourage disease and exhaust the vine. They have to be cut back to make the following year's pruning easier and to maintain the vine's balance.

This task is carried out by hand and unwanted buds are rubbed out with the thumb.

This is carried on if the traditional Mâconnais "a queue" pruning system is used.

It consists of cutting out some new shoots to avoid too much foliage and to provide the grapes with a better exposure.

It helps the aeration of the grapes and foliage, which benefit from more sunlight.

The vine is a creeping plant and its growth has to be kept under control (if it was not the shoots would become tangled) by trellising.
The leaves and shoots are lifted up between to parallel wires and the foliage is distributed evenly along the wires to obtain maximum sunlight.
This results in very tidy and elegant slopes.

In the course of the slow vineyard cycle which yields the much expected grapes, the véraison is an important step and triggers off the ripening period. A physical change in the grapes takes place over a very short period of 8 to 12 days :

  o the white grapes lose their green colour and become
    translucent,
  o the berries turn soft,
  o the grapes grow bigger.

This sudden development sets the date for the end of treatments and a short period of rest before picking begins in optimum conditions.

Burgundian vineyards are narrow and that is why strange tractors called "enjambeurs" (straddlers) are used.
Several operations have been mechanised over the last decades, allowing the vinegrower more time to attend other tasks.
Thanks to the straddlers, a number of operations are done mechanically such as :
- working the soil, burying manure and providing good drainage,
- clipping and trimming, to remove unwanted vegetation in summer,

- spraying the vineyards, which are susceptible to fungal diseases (mildiou, oïdium,...).
They have to be protected in order to obtain a good quality product.