Our recently refurbished out building used to be accessed by a pair of old wooden doors, which, quite frankly, were falling apart.

We asked one of guys, Fran, if he could come up with something better, and the picture above shows what he made. Please bear in mind that this door was not bought from some Do-It-Yourself warehouse, but was made completely by hand, from scratch!

To be honest, if it was me, I wouldn’t know where to begin, but some of our guys have a natural talent when it comes to this type of thing and I think that this effort proves exactly what I mean.

Obviously Fran is quite skilled with a welding torch, so perhaps if I buy him a few pieces of scrap metal and give him a picture of an Aston Martin he just might be able to come up with something……

Just in case you were wondering what this photo is – it’s the funnel of a rather large ferry taken at a ‘jaunty’ angle. The Pont Aven plies its trade between Santander on Spain’s northern coast and the UK (either Plymouth or Portsmouth) crossing the rather notorious Bay of Biscay.

On my outward journey about 10 days ago the sea state was officially described as ‘moderate’ (whatever that means), but suffice to say that it was enough to keep me awake most of the night on my 24 hour crossing. Heaven only knows what it would be like on a rough sea (some friends of mine did experience a rough sea last year, and I think their expression was ‘never again’, or words to that effect)

Spending 24 hours on a gently swaying ship does however, create a rather interesting sensation by playing tricks on your brain. For about a day after you eventually reach terra firma you still have the sensation that the ground is moving – or at least I did. I believe it must be something to do with your inner ear that incorporates the balance senors of your body….. mine is obviously all at sea!

So, I’m finally back in the office after about a month of travelling, so it’s time to get my head down, catch up, and press ahead with some of my new spring projects…… watch this space.

It’s clear that all the recent instability in the Middle East has caused chaos, not only on the streets of the countries concerned, but also in the crude oil market. Wild specualtion has predicted that prices could reach as much as US$200 a barrel (remembering that until recently we complained bitterly when the US$100 threshold was breached).

In an attempt to reduce consumption the Spanish Government has today implemented a new national speed limit of 110kph (68mph), reduced from 120kph. This is just one of several measures that will be introduced in the next year or two deisgned to reduce energy consumption around the country. Other schemes include the use of low energy bulbs in the home, air conditioning in public buildings will be subject to a minimum acceptable temperature in summer, and street lighting will be reduced by up to 50%, to name but a few.

Whilst this action is highly commendable – a public statement by Spain’s premier Jose Luis Zapatero, is not. In a very losely worded speech he defended the new speed limit by saying, in not so many words, “who cares if you’re ten minutes late for an appointment if you can save fuel”? The Spanish mentality dictates that you wouldn’t necessarily consider leaving home ten minutes earlier in order to compensate!

No doubt if I’m a little late for my long distance boat trip on Thursday the ferry will be obliged to wait for me (using the logic of Sr Zapatero)….

A couple of years ago I wrote about the effect of using ‘Google translate’ on a restaurant menu – it did not sound quite as appetising once the old software had got to work on it:

Brandada of codfish, cream of sprocket wheels with apple emulsion

Vieiras cleaning rods with apple and files

Even nearly two years later the same software doesn’t appear to be doing any better, as it appears to fail quite seriously with certain words by taking completely the wrong meaning. For example a local wine that appeared on a local website called Señor da Folla Verde – which should, strictly speaking, translate as Señor of the Green Leaf. Google, however, has made a real hash of it, and I can’t even begin to repeat the translation that it came up with. Perhaps if you click on the picture above you will be able to see the shocking result……

This winter’s best kept secret at Castro Martin…. sheep! We have decided to kill two or three birds with one stone by taking advantage of the fact that our ‘Pazo’ vineyard is completely enclosed by walls. We have been grazing a flock of sheep for the last few months.

Not only does this help to keep the grass down, but it also help to provide additional nutrients to the soil (excuse me if I do not elaborate on the detail). Finally, there is the subsistence side of the equation – people here keep cattle to eat, and not simply as pets. Now, being a city boy myself I am not so sure about this, I am more accustomed to getting my lamb from the butcher and not from a field at the end of my garden!

In the course of the last month or two nature has also taken its course, and we now have a few new offspring hopping around the place. Perhaps if we ever fall on hard times, and the wine business takes a dive, we could become sheep farmers instead?

I think not.

I’m never quite sure about long-haul holidays, certainly it’s great to encounter new countries and cultures, but then there’s the dreaded jet lag when you get back. To be honest I actually felt quite refreshed when I woke up this morning, the only problem being that my bedside clock was telling me that it was only 4.50am. By 5am I was at my computer sorting through the photos of our trip, and making sure that I look like Brad Pitt in every shot (thanks to Photoshop and Portrait Pro)! In fairness Angela now looks like Angelina Jolie in our holiday pics too, so what the hell…..

I am only back in the office for a week before I’m off again, this time to the UK, on a boat! After a six hour drive to Santander I have a 24 hour crossing to Portsmouth which traverses the notoriously rough Bay of Biscay. I’m not a bad sailor but I still have my fingers crossed that the weather Gods will be kind to me.

Meanwhile back at the Bodega, there is still nothing out of the ordinary going on. The orders are thankfully still arriving which keeps our bottling machine occupied, and out in the vineyards the pruning is actually finished – it is only the tying that remains (another neck and back breaking job that I happily leave to the younger men on our team).

Traditionally the months of January and February are pretty quiet in our Bodega, and it’s therefore usually quite a good time to sqeeze in a little R&R; (I don’t mean rock & roll, but rest and relaxation!)

Obviously travelling costs money, so when times are tough we try to encompass a bit of work in our travels, as if to justify our time out of the office. This year we will incorporate two tastings in different cities across the world, and a few customer visits in a third.

As soon as we return, I have to attend to a bit of urgent family business in the UK, that will probably mean that the whole month of February will be lost to me. I am resisting the temptation to travel with a laptop, but will still have my trusty Blackberry at my side (there’s no such thing as a real escape these days).

The big project upon my return is a complete re-hash of our main website and blog, indeed they will soon be one and the same, as our blog eventually becomes an integral part of the Castro Martin site.

By the way, I don’t really have a view of downtown Los Angeles from my office, but on a clear day…..

OK, so it’s yet another very bad play on words…… The fact is that we are currently having the tank rooms repainted in our bodega, and as you can see, all the tanks have been covered with plastic sheeting. There’s not too much action in our cellar at the moment as we leave the wine to relax slowly on it’s lees. It might be April or May before we finally start to ‘disturb’ the tanks again, so what better time to take advantage and give the place a fresh lick of paint?

If you have seen any previous posts relating to our tank room, you will already know that the walls were previously a sort of loud, orangey-yellow colour, which I guess you could argue brightened up the place a bit. However, the choice of colours on the special humidity/mould resistant paint chart is probably even more conservative than that of the Mercedes-Benz range, so inevitably we have opted for grey.

At least you won’t need to wear sun glasses inside the wine cellar when you visit us in future!

When you stop to think how many wine bottles are opened during the course of a year, and how many different shapes, sizes and colours there are, you have to ask yourself why does it take a Spanish chef to come up with a creative, and innovative design?

The three-starred Michelin chef Martin Berasategui has won the packaging equivalent of an Oscar for his new bottle at a presentation in Paris.

Unfortunately this innovative new bottle shape that is designed to capture wine sediment deposited at the bottom of some red wines, and therefore is of little use to us – if our albariño started to leave a sediment in the bottle then we really would have a serious wine-making problem on our hands.

It is a little difficult to see from this particular photograph but the bottle has a second ‘neck’ at the bottom that simply stops any deposit from flowing through (assuming of course that the bottle is handled carefully). Whilst I have to admit that this is a great idea, I am not so sure about the second part of the ‘Martin Berasategui System’, as it is known. Apparently to reap the full benefit of the system the bottle should ideally be transported and stored in an inclined position – not upright, nor laying down. Obviously, in order to acheive this position special cases and wine racks are also required, and I therefore ask myself, if the wine is not fully inclined for long-term storage is there a possibility that corks could dry out, thus leading to possible oxidation?

By the way, when I mentioned the presence of deposits in albariño, it is of course possible that white wines such as ours could precipitate tartrate crystals. In order to prevent this we cold-treat the wine (chill it very rapidly to -5°C and hold it for a week) which ensures that tartrates are removed before bottling. Personally I think that cold treatment is detrimental to our wine as it removes a little character, and in an ideal world I would not do it. The problem is that the majority of consumers see the presence of any tartrate crystals as undesirable, whereas in fact they are in reality, completely harmless. Pity.

In the last few months there have been several reports of dead birds falling from the skies, which quite understandably, have been followed by investigations and conjecture as to the cause of each tragedy (including one or two conspiracy theories).

In Arkansas the deaths were blamed on New Year’s Eve fireworks that caused the birds severe trauma, effectively scaring them to death. However, and alternative theory suggests that it could have been something to do with a tornado that killed three people in the same area earlier in the day.

On 3rd and 4th January dead birds were then discovered both in Louisiana and Falkoping, Southeastern Sweden, closely followed by several hundred more in Western Kentucky and Texas.

The lack of apparent detail for the reasons behind this avian carnage has generated countless theories, ranging from the changing of the earth’s magnetic poles to, a governmental plot and, naturally, aliens!
 
The very latest incident in Romania has, however, been fully explained…. it has been put down to alcohol. Birds that were originally thought to have died from Avian flu, instead apparently, drank themselves to death!
 
Romanian officials decided the starlings had died after eating grape ‘marc’ – the leftovers from the wine-making process. The head of the local veterinary authority said that analysis of the starlings’ gizzards showed they had died from alcohol poisoning.