I wanted to save a couple of heirloom grape vines and transplant them into my own yard. The vines are probably older than I am and I expected the roots to go deep and have trouble digging them up.  Much to my surprise, the roots did not go deep at all, but sprawled across the yard no more than 3 inches underground. I simply started at the trunk and kept pulling the root up out of the ground.  When I got to the end, I had a good 20 foot of root.  The soil was rich and deep where these were grown, so I don't know why the roots grew this way.

Now I'm not sure how to transplant it.  I have a couple questions and I'm hoping a grape expert or enthusiast browses this forum.  

1: Can I cut off a piece of root and plant it by itself and expect it to sprout a new vine?

2: The trunks are in rough shape, with gaping holes and splinters.  Should I trim the trunks down to restart a more clean vine?  

Does anyone have any recommendations?

What kind of fine is it? For a Muscadine you you would cut it back to the head of the vine http://www.smallfruits.org/Muscadines/production/MuscadineGuide2003.pdf

Being you are in zone 6, I suppose it's a hybrid or wild ?

Take a couple of cuttings with viable buds,root them,and start over?
Interesting photo's though.

Im with tyro. Is it even alive. You can root prune it back. Cut the trunk down to 6 inchs if its alive. Have you gotten any fruit

Ask a couple of Grape people.

I recently gave away 3 table grape vines and they had 4-6' roots and the guy that took them coiled the roots in the hole and buried the whole thing.

The above ground trunk looked about the same size as mine and he did not trim or cut anything.  He said he would plant them, leave them alone until next dormancy.  I would think (Translation: I DON'T KNOW) that you would not want to prune the trunk too much.

BTW- I do not know what I am talking about when it comes to Grapes, which is why I got rid of them, also because the "seedless" grapes had seeds.

The vines are definitely alive. They bore fruit last year, and are moist inside if you cut them.  If I knew I could sprout new vines from pieces of roots, I would cut off a few pieces and pot them before planting the main trunk.  I might try doing that anyway, since I have 20+ foot of root to work with.

They are some type of bunch grape. They are not Muscadines.  

I don't think you can get new plants from the roots pieces.  I would cut the trunk down to about 1to1 1/2  foot and trim the roots back to what can fit in the hole.  I would not coil the roots in the hole.

I would take cuttings from last years growth consisting of three sets of buds. At the base of the buds closesest to the roots straight across. The top buds come up about half way to next set cut on a slant. I have rooted these in one of two ways. 1. Through use of a hydroponic unit. 2. By use of a misting system. Either way takes anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to see roots. Once see good roots can either pot them up in a pot and let them grow out that season in a gallon size pot or go into the ground. See also backyardgrowers.com for more details.

Well, I went back to the site where I got the grapes to get some young cuttings. I started pulling on the vines and was lucky to find that one led to the ground and had rooted.  Unfortunately, only one of the vines had rooted, so the other one I took some cuttings and hopefully will be able to root them using a misting system like macmike mentioned.  

For the main vines with the 20ft roots I think I am going to dig a trench on the edge of my property and bury the roots in them.  I think I am just going to try to preserve the vine, but not plant it as part of a vinyard.  I will do that later with the newly rooted vines.  

Some pics for the curious: 

This vine reminds me of Himrod, has been around a while and tends to send out lateral roots.

This is a site on starting grape cuttings I found a while back.  Good luck
http://www.eccevines.com/growing-grapes-from-cuttings.html

I see at least 4 new vines you can grow easily from the later pictures, maybe more.
Just severe the sections where there is a root with an associated branch, make your cut about 2 inches from the node with the root on each side of the original vine. Plant the severed rooted vine about 4-6 inches deep or basically you want to have the first node of the remaining branch and inch or two above soil line. Then trim trim the top of the exposed vine(branch) back to a couple inches above that 1st node which you left exposed.

As far as replanting the old vine, from what I read back when I started a mini-vineyard at my old-old house, it doesn't work well. The suggestion was to cut the vine way back to nearly a stump and trim the roots way back as well and basically start over. In the first picture it looks like you have a smaller stump next to the chicken on the left. That is sort of what you want, but shorten the roots even more. You will want to get them all into the ground as soon as possible so the dormant vine starts to put new roots into the warming soil long before you get any vegetative growth. That is given your ground wont freeze solid anymore, if so you may want to refrigerate the small rooted severed pieces until then. As for cuttings, grape cuttings are easy, at least they were for me. I got around 90% success my first try.
With the cuttings and transplants, you just have to limit the new growing buds to one or two for a newly started vine because you don't have a developed root system yet, otherwise the whole deal could fail. Well maybe the old beast could handle more, but I wouldn't let it get crazy. IMO

The link Chapman provided is a good resource. I have that book, it's a good read.

Well I planted the vines.  The two vines had each broken into two pieces while I was digging them up so I ended up planting four.  I just hope they will live in case I need to get cuttings from them in the future in the event the cuttings I already have fail to root.  Here's a picture of the longest one: 



I dug the ditch with a backhoe.  Thank Goodness.....

Well that was fast!  I took six cuttings, dipped them in rooting hormone, and stuck them in large water soaked Jiffy Pellets.  I then wrapped them in a grocery bag(Just the pelleted bottoms, with the wood sticking out of the top of the bag), and set them on a heating mat.
Barely a month later and look at the results!  four out of six have great roots!  I wasn't expecting this so soon! I have to pot them up right away!

Looks good.

Good work!

I would just direct plant some of them, leave one node sticking out of the soil or leave two nodes and then trim them down to one once you see the buds starting to swell. When I did my grape rows I direct planted all of my rooted cuttings and they all grew well(around 12 vines). Same goes as with earlier, not sure where your at but you would want to direct plant them only if your soil won't freeze solid anymore this year, and based off of your earlier pictures I'm guessing that isn't an issue.  Spring is a great time for root development into the soil, let the roots spread naturely so they can more effectively gather water and nutrients for the plant versus circling in a pot.