Well, it’s that time of year again! Over the last few days my writing hand has been aching as I have been busy completing forms to submit our wines for the 2011 wine guides. Even is this electronic age many of these forms are still sent either by fax or by regular mail and so have to be filled out by hand – many of the same details, year-in, year-out.

Indeed the only thing that usually changes are the wine descriptions, and of course the wine samples themselves, but this year we at least have something new to say…… our ‘Sobre Lias’ labelled wines are introduced with the 2009 vintage.

The closing date to submit to many of the guides is the end of June 2010 (for publication in 2011), which means that with the additional ageing that we make ‘on the lees’, the wines are only just ready in time to be considered, and the bottles are sent very last minute.

Yesterday, I prepared no less than four sets of samples (and paperwork), but thankfully this annual chore is now pretty much behind me. As far as I am aware there is only one more publication that needs samples before the end of July – I will wait a little longer before I do this as our 2009 wines are still very young and ‘edgy’ at this stage in their development.