Saturday! Potentially the craziest day of the week (for reasons that I have explained many times before). Also, just to compound matters slightly, when we opened our shutters it was pretty dull and overcast, much as the forecast had predicted. By the time we arrived at the bodega, there was a short shower of rain – fortunately not heavy, and over within a few minutes. In the end, that single shower proved to be the first and the last of the day. Indeed, by lunchtime the sun had returned.

As you may already know, all of our fruit is picked by hand and collected in small, well-ventilated baskets, each one when loaded weighing in at around 18-20 kg. We hold a stock of just under 2,000 of these baskets, and so, when they are all distributed, can mean that we are collecting potentially between 35-40,000 kg. Today, every single basket is being used, and at times there is a queue to collect more, once they have been emptied and washed. We employ one guy full time simply washing baskets!

Of course we always know that Saturday will be busy, and so the secret is (actually more just common sense), to make sure that we have the staff to handle it.  The other potential problem area (or bottleneck), is the pressing, but having made the decision to shorten the pressing cycle this year meant that the loading and unloading of our two presses was more or less a continuous cycle – simply alternating between the two.

There is no really special photos or videos today as we simply had too many other priorities during the day – just a rear view of our grape reception (used just once a year!)