Gauging vine age

[TJsBasement]

We was out at the yard sales and one house had some grape vines that had to be old. The one vine come straight out of the ground then split into 3 big stems, each one had to be 3.5 inch a crossed easy. I must say that I haven't had the chance to checkout a real vineyard yet and this was my first time up and close with old grape vine but they had to be old right to be that fat. The (trellis) was odd looking, post formed a ~ 15' x 30' rectangle but the only wires was all the way at the top near 7 foot up forming a ( for lack of a better description ) flat archway. Not sure how you would harvest the grapes with them being like 7 feet + off the ground and the vines filled in the rectangle so grapes in the center would be almost inaccessible, any good reason to put the fruit up that high? It looked like everything on the top side of the rectangle surface was new growth and everything up to the surface was very old and keep clean of growth looked to be taken care of but the again what the he!! do I know. I wanted to look more and maybe talk to the owner but we was in a group and one of the kids with us was having a melt down.

 

[grapeman]

It sounds like a pretty standard trellis set up as an arbor for a yard. The grapes grow up the sides and over the top. The grapes hang down below for easy picking.