Definition: Vineyard management (contract for)

m In viticulture, contracts known as vignolage in French-speaking Switzerland governed the maintenance of buildings and land (walls, ditches, vineyard care, etc.), expenditure on fertiliser and stakes, transport, grape pressing and wine storage, but above all the sharing of the harvest. Given the large fluctuations in yield, the lessor often waived his share in bad years and granted "aid", but made up for it in good years. Vignolage for viticulture corresponds to the term sharecropping, an agricultural contract in which the owner of a rural estate leases it to the sharecropper in exchange for a share of the fruits and crops.