Saturday, as always, is a crazy day – when everybody wants to pick their grapes. It all started well enough, blue skies, a good, well-prepared bodega team, what could possibly go wrong? Well, not much to be honest. Despite the kilos of grapes flying in by the tractor or van load, our guys managed to stay on top of things.

It wasn’t until nearly 9pm that we had a slight disaster when the truck delivering our grapes lost a pallet. As we manoeuvred an adjacent pallet we didn’t notice that they were ‘interlocked’ with each other, so when we moved one, it tipped the other! For transport the pallets are only wrapped with a little film, and so once they start to fall they don’t stop. A cascade of grapes, ending on the floor!

I asked myself the question – do we now have to declassify this pallet to Viña de la Tierra (vineyard of the earth)? OK, that’s just my sense of humour, but at least my comment raised a few smiles…

Joking apart, Saturday turned out to be especially busy (mainly because of the half day lost on Friday), and the presses were actually working throughout the night. We know that Sunday will also be busy, but hopefully not quite as much.