Pruning for the use of a wrought iron arbor as a trellis

Hi everyone,

I am new to this group and new to grape growing. We bought a 50 acre farm two springs ago and there is a nice wrought iron arbor at the entrance to our front yard connected with a matching 3 or 4 foot iron fence on one side. The only trouble is that it was painted white and is now ugly with rust, so I wanted to cover it with vines. I chose for fun to plant a white grape vine on one side and I have two red grape vines on the other side of the bottom of the arbor. After reading as much as I can about pruning etc. I am still unsure of how I want to prune thes vines since I want two things: to cover most of the arbor and to get grapes. Each of the vines is approximately 5-6 feet in height at this point. I planted them last spring and did NO pruning as I didn't know what to do.

Would anyone have any tips/advice for me as to what kind of pruning I can do near the end of this winter before buds start to shoot? We have been having a terribly cold winter with the night time temps averaging around -30 degrees celsius! I am afraid of bud and vine winter kill. We did have a lot of snow however, but as of now, I can see the bud union or where the graft was - it's not covered by snow. I took a small cutting of one of the tall but somewhat thin vines and not only the buds but the entire vine was brown all the way through. I am going to try to buy that book The Grape Grower and I did watch the online presentation on dormant vine pruning by Fritz Westover. I just want to be sure of what I am doing. I looks like there are several about 4-5 canes growing out of the bud union at this point (which I guess could be considered cordons) which have all been attached and growing either vertically or horizontally on my arbor trellis.

Thanks in advance for any help you might have for me!

 

i have that book and its great, he covers a dozen pruning methods. definatly worth it.