A picture of the offending wotsit

2008 Harvest – Day 5 – Wednesday 1st October

There is no vintage that passes without some sort of technical hitch, and of course, 2008 is no exception. Our problem this year is with the temperature control, which as you may have read, started a couple of weeks ago. So for those of you who are technically minded here is a brief explanation of what went wrong….

The long springy thing attached to the top of the wotsit started to freeze up – naturally this part controls the flow to the thingamybob, which in turn supplies the oojimaflip, and therefore the compressor starts to overheat. OK, so that just about covers that!

Seriously though, this fault gives us a bit of a headache, as it means that we have to check the cold machine every few hours (day and night) to make sure that it is working properly. Regrettably, we are told, that a full repair cannot be carried out until after the winemaking is over as it will necessitate possibly two or three days work whilst the technicians drain the refridgerant.

It now begins to look like we have broken the back of the picking, as the volume of grapes arriving at our door starts to slow. As I mentioned at the offset there are some growers, including ourselves, that have produced more or less the same as last year, but then there are others who have produced less. Overall this will mean that we have a slightly smaller harvest than 2007, and the local news is that this trend appears to be the norm for the large majority of bodegas in our denomination.