Juan (Señor Gadget) demonstrates the new equipment

Much of the investment that we make in the Bodega is to do with improving the quality of our wine, but not always….. As I have said in previous blogs, the pruning and tying of vines is a back-breaking job, made even more so by our ‘Pergola’ system of training. Anything that we can do to make the job a little easier is therefore welcomed by our staff.

This year we have made a modest investment in a new gadget for the vineyard which carefully ties the shoot of the vine plant to the training wires (it leaves a precise space around each shoot so that it does not become constricted during growth). The chore of tying vines to the wires is now infinitely quicker than before, and so we are able to save time, and perhaps a few pesetas, for other important jobs in and around the Bodega.

Cold stabilisation (note the ‘frosted’ metal tube)

In earlier blogs I have discussed the process of cold stabilisation (chilling the wine rapidly to approximately -5°C to precipitate the tartrates), and over the last months we have invested here too.

The machine that we use is a little old but very high quality, and far too expensive to discard completely, so we have given it a thorough overhaul – a completely new and much more efficient compressor that allows us to pass the wine more quickly than before – saving time and energy, but more importantly, reducing the time that the wine is exposed to possible oxidation. Our local contractors have been working on this overhaul for nearly six months now, and so hopefully, after so much time (and a substantial financial investment), we will finally start to benefit from the results.