You may know that a couple of weeks ago we returned from quite an extensive tour of the United States, and whilst we always try to stay on top of things, inevitably we always face a backlog of work. No sooner had we started on this, than I received some devastating news from the UK. The tragic loss of my mother. Without wishing to dwell on this subject, the inevitable result was that I had to spend a further ten days away from our business, and as if that was not enough, I have now returned from England with a heavy cold.

So much has happened over the last few weeks that I really don’t know what to write about first, but perhaps the most significant event, from a bodega point of view, is the racking of the first tanks of our 2015 wines. It was pretty much decided before we went to America (already a month ago) that at least some tanks would be ready to remove from their lees. In today’s photo you might notice a few bubbles on the surface of the sediment, these are from the natural CO2 trapped inside the tank, and also the crystal deposits that leave the inside of the tank stained brown….. but nothing that a good cleaning won’t remove. As I have written many times before the timing of racking our wines is ultimately decided simply by a combination of tasting and experience – not really a high-tech methodology I’m afraid.

The new wine that we are preparing now still needs to be cold-stabilised, filtered and submitted to the Denomination tasting panel before it can finally be bottled. This whole process will take another month before we can even consider selling a bottle into the domestic market here in Spain. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention that the 2015 wines are actually quite good!