Many forecasts said that last night’s rain would continue well into this morning, effectively stopping at about midday. As it turns out they were all completely wrong. It stopped raining yesterday evening after only a couple of hours, rained a little during the night, but by this morning it had dried up completely. Admittedly, the day started heavily overcast with dark grey clouds on virtually every side – far too threatening to start picking, and so we decided to hold off until the afternoon, condensing our work into a half day.

I know that the English are reputed to have an obsession with the weather, but this year, I have to say that it is a healthy obsession. Having said that, I can only say that there is not one single website that has proved to be accurate this year, and indeed, the forecasts simply change each time you look at them.

Although there was nothing happening in the vineyard work started today inside the bodega. After a day or two of cold settling (when all the soil, skins, stalks etc. fall to the bottom of the tank), it is time to start racking the grape must into clean tanks. Today’s photo show the ‘fangos’ (sediment) that is left once the racking is complete. Fangos from all the tanks is collected in another tank, allowed to settle again, and clean grape must can be drawn off.

Owing to the bad weather hardly any of our grape suppliers decided to harvest, consequently it was a very quiet day indeed. With yet more rain forecast in the coming days, it’s just a shame that more people didn’t take advantage of this short window.