Can you tell us about the type of vines you grow and your winery?
Our estate is located in St Pourçain in the Allier region and we have 15 hectares of vines on which we produce AOP Saint-Pouçain Val de Loire wines. The Tèfle interceps mowers were purchased with a colleague who has around thirty hectares at his disposal. We produce white, red and rosé wines; Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Tressallier for the white varieties, and Gamay and Pinot Noir for the reds. We produce almost everything that can be made from grape juice.
What are the planting densities and particularities of your operation?
Planting density is 4,000 vines per hectare on most plots, with wide, tall vines. My college moved to an organic farm, and I to an HVE farm. We don’t weed our vines much, if at all, so we have to do a lot of tilling and mowing, which is why we bought Interceps Trèfle MGV-Balligand mowers.
What types of soil do you work on?
Our vines are planted on all types of soil: clay-limestone, clay-granitic, sandy, some stony, some not at all, and so on. Clover mowers are extremely versatile, since they can be used both in stony areas for remedial work and in easier vineyards for conventional maintenance.
Have you tested other interceps mowers? How did you find out about MGV-Balligand Interceps clover mowers?
We already had an old interceps mower, based on a different principle, but which didn’t work very well. My oenologist told me about the cloverleaf system. I then contacted the product manager at MGV-Balligand, we met at SITEVI, and we invested in the Trèfle after he came to give us a demonstration.
What do you think are the main advantages of the company and its interceps mowers?
The big plus points are that this is a small company that’s easy to talk to, and that the shape of the Trèfle mower is well suited to getting between the feet. My colleague, who plants his vines more tightly, often found himself with machines that couldn’t get between the stake and the vine, but here we get much more precise work than with other solutions. The system is very simple, and we lent the mowers to a colleague who quickly got the hang of them, even though he’d never used one before.
Have you had a chance to try out the pressure settings on the vines, and what did you think?
I was a little worried that the support on the vines would be too hard, as I had young plantations to mow at the time, but during the demonstration in a young plantation with only small stakes, the machine adapted very well. So it’s just as effective on plantiers with a soft setting as with a hard setting on older vines.
Are there any other important aspects you’d like to highlight about your experience with MGV-Balligand cloverleaf mowers?
Due to improper handling, we had a breakdown on one of our mowers last year. The MGV-Balligand product manager got back to us immediately with advice on how to proceed, and we received the spare parts very quickly – 2 days later, the machines were running again. That’s really the good thing about small businesses, because there’s an exchange, with people who love what they do and who don’t leave us without a solution. This is essential in our work, because we need problems to be solved very quickly. Especially since, given our location, there’s no one around to help us out.
Would you recommend MGV-Balligand clover inter-row mowers to other winegrowers?
This is the second year we’ve used them, and we’ve recommended them to our colleagues, as they’re just the right tool for the type of work we needed to do.
