In 2010, we began pruning our most prized old-vine vineyards. We had re-pruned Guman in 2009 to diminish the number of shoots and clusters, and had shoot-thinned both Guman and Glos in the summer of 2009, but we had never taken first responsibility for pruning these treasures. We did so with the thought of making their lives easier—asking the vines to push fewer shoots, support fewer clusters, send sap through less wood. In each case, we approached each vine and inquired—how many healthy shoots had it supported last year? One could simply count. Then we selected healthy buds, preferring in general those closer to the trunk, on healthy arms. And we limited the number of buds to the previous year's number of healthy shoots; sometimes we made an exception for a plant that we thought might be on an upswing; when we were uncertain, we left a few extra buds thinking that we could thin down later.