Normal service has been resumed in more ways than one. As you will notice we have today, for the very first time, included a very brief video clip of the harvest. Nothing too exciting, but just to give you a flavour it shows the 20kg baskets of fruit arriving in our reception area, being offloaded onto a scale to be weighed. Weighing the fruit is only the first part of the arrival process – every single load will also undergo visual checks and then a full analysis in our lab. It is never simply a question of accepting every kilo that arrives at our door, and although it is only our second day, some fruit has already been rejected as being below the quality that we demand.

It was another very warm, sunny day that helps to make life in the vineyard just a bit more pleasant (but that’s only if you don’t take into account the back-breaking, neck-wrenching chore of picking from our overhead pergolas). Our morning session was actually quite quiet, with very few grapes arriving. On Tuesday when we picked from around the bodega, the grapes only had metres to travel to our reception area, and therefore the delay from vine to press could be measured in minutes. Today the journey from vineyard to bodega was a little longer and so the start of the ‘grape cascade’ did not really begin until the afternoon.

In the early evening we anticipated our normal ‘rush hour’ when it’s possible to face a backlog of fruit waiting to be pressed. Now, I’m not sure it was to do with the timing of the arrivals, or if we are just becoming more efficient over time, but I have to say that the backlog simply didn’t materialise and the whole late evening session passed off very smoothly indeed.

Meanwhile, Angela had reported from her laboratory, that, as we had anticipated, the acidity in the fruit had dropped to almost perfect levels – our unscheduled rest day yesterday appeared to have paid off!

Normal service has been resumed in more ways than one. As you will notice we have today, for the very first time, included a very brief video clip of the harvest. Nothing too exciting, but just to give you a flavour it shows the 20kg baskets of fruit arriving in our reception area, being offloaded onto a scale to be weighed. Weighing the fruit is only the first part of the arrival process – every single load will also undergo visual checks and then a full analysis in our lab. It is never simply a question of accepting every kilo that arrives at our door, and although it is only our second day, some fruit has already been rejected as being below the quality that we demand.

It was another very warm, sunny day that helps to make life in the vineyard just a bit more pleasant (but that’s only if you don’t take into account the back-breaking, neck-wrenching chore of picking from our overhead pergolas). Our morning session was actually quite quiet, with very few grapes arriving. On Tuesday when we picked from around the bodega, the grapes only had metres to travel to our reception area, and therefore the delay from vine to press could be measured in minutes. Today the journey from vineyard to bodega was a little longer and so the start of the ‘grape cascade’ did not really begin until the afternoon.

In the early evening we anticipated our normal ‘rush hour’ when it’s possible to face a backlog of fruit waiting to be pressed. Now, I’m not sure it was to do with the timing of the arrivals, or if we are just becoming more efficient over time, but I have to say that the backlog simply didn’t materialise and the whole late evening session passed off very smoothly indeed.

Meanwhile, Angela had reported from her laboratory, that, as we had anticipated, the acidity in the fruit had dropped to almost perfect levels – our unscheduled rest day yesterday appeared to have paid off!