Yet more building work….. if it isn’t laying concrete or adding a new roof, then it might be putting up a new cattle shed – you can’t say that our work is not varied!

Yes, this week our guys are busy building yet another shed, but this time in the corner of our Pazo vineyard. It’s not for keeping our tractor, but it is for housing our new grass cutting equipment – a small flock of sheep.

I often make mention of the fact that we do not use herbicides, preferring instead to let the grass grow between the vines and cutting it manually (keeping our practices as eco-friendly as possible). Now we are taking this a step further, by introducing a handful of sheep to graze under the pergolas during the winter months. Not only will this help to keep the grass down, but it may also add a little natural fertilizer to the soil!

There are other bodegas that already do this, but then one of the fundamental pre-requisites is that you need a fully enclosed vineyard. Naturally our ‘Pazo’ vineyard qualifies admirably and is completely ‘walled’ as its name implies (similar to ‘Clos’ in French), making a perfect pasture. There is another bodega, local to us, that uses geese instead of sheep, and this seems to work pretty well, so we shall see….

No doubt I will keep you informed as to how this experiment works out.