Well, we are finally getting to the end of our 2026 campaign, and apart from the very first day, the weather has been pretty kind to us, indeed, almost too kind. Apart from one minor accident, involving a twisted knee, there has almost been nothing out of the ordinary worth mentioning (by the way, the knee was bandaged and is healing nicely, with no serious damage done). Everything has gone more or less according to plan.

Over the last few hours our grapes continued to trickle in, but perhaps at a slower pace than before, for a couple of reasons. We have lost a few of our picking team as some have left to prepare for their return to college (our younger pickers are students), and also, the team are simply getting a bit tired (including the author!).

Now that all our grapes are gathered in we can focus our full attention to the wine making. A few tanks have already been seeded, and this process will continue for another week or so. It will be perhaps the end of September before the fermentations finish, and following that there will only be the lees ageing.

Overall, we are quite happy with the 2026 vintage, the quality is good (we will not know exactly how good for at least a few months). Alcohol should be around 12.5% (which after a hot summer might be a little surprising), and acidity might be a slight touch lower than normal.

As always, our teams both inside and outside the bodega have worked like trojans and we are both grateful for, and proud of their efforts.

After a week of hard graft the end of our 2026 harvest is finally on the horizon as we head towards our final couple of vineyards. Overall, we believe that this vintage will be slightly better than we had anticipated just a couple of weeks ago, After a fairly hot, but acutely dry summer, the berries on our vines were quite small, and at that stage had a very high sugar content. This sugar content would inevitably equate to high alcohol. It was the week of rain leading up to our harvest that really changed the quality of our harvest. There was just enough rain to swell the berries a little without breaking the skins (if the berries swell too much and the skins do break then this will immediately provoke rot).

In today’s photo we are racking the must to clean tanks (you can see the special glass section that we join to the hose, as described a day or two ago). Angela has drawn off a small sample from a special tap on the side of the tank, and inspects the must. Of course, at this point it is simply grape juice without any alcohol at all. It is really delicious, but more importantly, from experience you can get at least get an idea of what the final quality of the wine might be.

Today has been slightly overcast for a change, although the cloud cover has resulted in a bit more humidity, so still quite warm for working. Having said that, despite the harvest continuing outside, our main focus today has been inside, as we embark on the winemaking process. The clean must (juice) from the racking, has been allowed to recover a few degrees of temperature in order that we can start the seeding of the tanks (adding the yeast). This is not a simple process, and needs to be done carefully, over a period of time, to achieve the best results. Perhaps some people imagine that we open a packet and pour the powdered yeast into the tanks…. if only it were that simple (and one day, through advancements, it might be)!

To explain quickly, we first rehydrate the yeast in warm water (the same as you might in breadmaking). Once the yeast has soaked for a short time and becomes active, we slowly start adding some grape must to the yeast mixture. This process is done slowly over a period of time. During this time, the reaction of the sugar with the yeast is quite dramatic and produces a hug amount of foam. To give you an idea the container that we use for mixing is 300 litres, but the photo shows the level of foam with just 5o litres of liquid in the bottom… in other words 250 litres of foam!

The final part of the seeding process is to add this yeast/must mixture to the tank and pump it over until completely mixed. Pumping over means making a circuit of hoses, to extract must from the bottom of the tank and pump it back up to the top creating a type of circulatory system.

It seems like the sun might be with us all week, another really hot day. Harvest is always a physically demanding time of year, but when the temperature is high it can be especially draining for everyone.

For most of the day things went quite smoothly, as they have for most of the week, but by the end of this long day, a few things started to go wrong. A puncture to one of our tractors was the first sign of trouble, but unfortunately worse was still to come. As  the last few grapes of the day were being unloaded, one of our cellar team twisted awkwardly, and dislocated his knee completely! What a horror! An ambulance was quickly called and within the hour the unfortunate victim was whisked off to hospital.

I think that yesterday, by saying that it had been “uneventful”, was probably tempting fate. The last problem of this forgettable day occurred during the night, and wasn’t discovered until the morning. A fuse on our refrigeration machine blew obviously meaning that the temperature control of our tanks was lost. However, when the tanks are already very cold, and the control is off for a few hours, the tank temperature only changes very slowly, and so the effect is not disasterous.

Yet another sunny day, and today quite a hot one. The forecast puts the temperature in the high 20’s°C, touching 30°C (86°F). The only saving grace is the our system of vine training, the overhead pergolas, does afford some shelter from direct sunlight making it just a small touch more bearable.

Work continues both inside and outside the cellar, with grapes being collected and more tanks being racked. Once our harvest is underway the process becomes a non-stop conveyor for a period of about 5 to 6 weeks. (Luckily we only have white grapes, because if we also made red wine then once we had finished the white, then we would immediately start again with the red!). I am far too old for that, one harvest a year is more than enough, thank you!

In the end, it was just another (long, hard) but uneventful day!

The sun is shining once again, and the picking is moving along at a steady pace. However, work has already started inside the cellar as our fresh grape must takes the first step in its transition into wine. After a couple of days of cold settling (when all the soil particles, debris and other fragments drop to the bottom of the tank), we draw off the clean must from above, leaving all the debris behind at the bottom. This process is known as racking.

When the clean must is being drawn off we use a special connection in our hoses that includes a short glass ‘window’ so we can judge when we are reaching the debris (or fangos as we call it). There is a special mechanism which extends inside the tank that we can lower bit by bit and then stop as soon as the colour of the liquid in the window changes. All very technical (well, not actually, it’s quite a simple, but clever mechanism).

Meanwhile our presses are slowly processing more and more fruit as our team moves between our various vineyard sites. The flow has actually slowed a little in the last day or so, as the weekend is always the most hectic time for harvest (when our growers often have more family members available to pick).

We opened our shutters on day three to clear, cloudless blue skies, and fingers crossed, our weather is set fair for the coming week.

As in the last couple of years, the only slight problem that we face at harvest time is recruiting good, worthwhile pickers. As with many other fruit crops around the world, good quality, reliable labour is getting harder to find,(especially as the grape harvest in more or less the whole denomination is concentrated into a period of just a few short weeks). Of course, we can simply recruit a lot of people, but experience has proved to us that many are not really good enough, easily distracted and working at a very relaxed pace. Naturally, we don’t expect our pickers to be automatons, but we do need to trust them to be able to work without constant supervision. Sometimes it is better, and actually more efficient, to work with fewer very good people, than a vast army of people just going through the motions.

Having said all that we are still working at a brisk pace, and grapes are moving through smoothly as soon as they arrive. Once the grapes have been pressed and the grape must (juice) is moved into our tanks, this still leaves us with the ‘bagazo’ (the grape skins and stalks). This bagazo is collected in small containers and then transferred to a much larger container, in the middle of our car park. Today’s photo shows this process.

The good news at the start of day two was that the grey skies had largely cleared, and the sun actually started to shine on our harvest. At the end of day one we had the opportunity to taste the first couple of tanks, and we were not too disappointed. The grape must showed some pretty good potential, with it usual intense fruit, and despite the hot summer, still retaining a fresh acidity. From very early analysis is possible that alcohol might be somewhere between 12.5% and 13%, but obviously we still have some days to go, working in different vineyard sites with different aspects and soils.

Day two started under a comparatively clear skies and broken sunshine, a vast improvement on Saturday! I know that I am repeating myself now, but I do have to say that once the first press was loaded, the team in the bodega worked like a well-oiled (and well trained) machine. Unloading vehicles, loading presses, washing the used cases, working like a conveyor belt, as it should. There was a brisk flow of fruit arriving all afternoon, but no sooner had it been weighed, tested and generally checked for quality, than it was already being loaded into one of the presses…. there were virtually no delays. As soon as one press was unloaded, it was immediately refilled and restarted.

I think that it would be very fair to say that our Sunday passed off without incident.

Well, unfortunately, the first day of our 2026 harvest didn’t go exactly as planned, and for quite a common reason in our region…. the weather. In the last few days the forecasts had been changing almost from one hour to the next, and as often happens, the four weather apps that I was consulting, were more or less contradicting each other. Some forecast rain, others not. Regrettably for us, it was the forecast of rain that proved to be the more accurate.

Although it was overcast from the offset, the very light rain did not arrive until almost midday. This very fine rain continued for the next three hours, and despite it not being that heavy, it was enough to start soaking the fruit, rendering it unsuitable for pressing – too much residual water on the grape skins.

At lunch time we told all our pickers that work would be suspended for the day, and so after lunch all that remained was to gather the fruit that had already been harvested. Despite making this decision the afternoon proved to be quite busy, and the presses worked hard all evening. Of course, it was not the day that we had planned, but in the end it was not a bad start.

This year’s growing season has been interesting to say the least. Hailstorms, drought, fire and now rain (I think that we are still missing a plague of frogs to complete the set!).

With all the heat and sunshine this year we had already anticipated that this year’s harvest would be early, and so, perhaps only for the second time in the last 25 years, we will start to pick in August. Ironically, after two months of completely dry weather, last weekend we experienced our first rainfall. The rain has continued on and off for the last few days, but the forecast for heavy rain and storms has not materialised (fingers crossed). We are planning to start on Friday 28th, all being well. Of course, after this rain, if left too long, the bunches could start to develop rot. Friday is our target day, as, depending on which forecast you follow, there is still a possibility of rain. However, as I always say, especially at harvest time, that the best forecast will be to simply open the shutters (on Friday) and look outside!

Today’s picture shows the aftermath of our fire just outside the fence of the bodega some 10 days ago. Although the fire did not take hold on any of our vines, a few of those around the perimeter were scorched, leaving the fruit completely unusable. I have tasted a few grapes from vines a couple of meters inside the fence, and perhaps thanks to the rain, they should probably be OK, albeit we will keep this fruit separated, and pressed apart, just in case.