With tanks now well into their fermentations, all work is now fully focused inside the bodega. After every harvest our second highest priority, after winemaking, is deep cleaning. Every floor and surface has to be cleaned and scrubbed, to eliminate the stubborn, sticky grape juice, and every piece of equipment has to be stripped and completely serviced ready for next year. The sooner that this can be done the better, because once dry, the grape must can set hard like varnish!

The warehouse space shown in today’s photo is the very same that, some weeks ago, appeared in my posts full of pallets (or sometimes bottle stock). Today it is not. There are many areas that have to be emptied completely during harvest to allow free access, and also to ensure that stock does not get stained or damaged in any way. Suffice to say that space is always at a premium at this time of year.

In the meantime, samples of this year’s must have now been analysed by an official laboratory, rather than just our own small facility in the bodega. The results are slightly different to ours, but in a favourable way. According to this lab the acidity of this year’s wines should be at a normal level for our region (higher than we thought initially), and also the alcohol should be slightly lower, probably a bit nearer 12.5%. Of course, these results are still not definitive, until the wine is completely finished, but they do indicate that we should be producing a very typical, Salnés Valley, Atlantic albariño in 2022.