Apart from the trucks that deliver our pallets of grapes the rest arrive in transport of all shapes and sizes. A few years ago our smallest ever delivery was in the back of a Fiat Panda!! (Admittedly it was only the remnants of the main delivery). However, I have never seen grapes delivered in a horse transport before, not exactly a horsebox, but still used for moving horses (I think). Suffice to say that it had been well cleaned, and so we won’t be making an ‘equine cuvée’ this year.

The fact that I am writing about transport is because Monday was a hugely uneventful day, which from at least my point of view is actually a very good thing. That’s not to say that the cellar wasn’t busy, because it was. It simply means that everything happened as it should.

The one thing that stands out from the vintage so far is that the yields are quite low. That doesn’t mean that the number of kilos is down, because this is quite the contrary – the yield of grapes per hectare is up. What I mean is that when we actually press the grapes, the volume of juice is not as high as it usually is. Normally, in a year where the yield of juice per kilo is low we would expect higher quality wine, with more concentrated must, but in 2021 it would seem that this is not the case. The juice is sweet, as it always is, but it is not particularly viscose and the potential alcohol is still quite low. Indeed, I would still stand by the prediction of my post on Saturday – somewhere between 12% and 12.5%.

After a long, exhausting night in the bodega on Saturday, we had our fingers crossed that Sunday might be just a little less hectic. The day itself started with bright sunshine, albeit (as has been the pattern this summer), temperatures in the low to mid 20’s (70-75°F). Indeed, the night had been quite chilly, and so sweaters were needed fist thing, for our journey to the bodega.

However, after two and a half days focusing on the vineyards, it was time to start a little work inside. The first tanks were racked, and the clean grape must moved to new tanks ready for fermentation. Our fermentation never starts immediately simply because the juice is too cold (having been chilled rapidly in order to help the wine settle). It usually takes at least a few days for the temperature of our tanks to recover sufficiently for seeding.

Our day ended in the early hours of Monday morning, with everyone feeling just a bit jaded after a hard weekend. Thankfully Sunday was not quite as hectic as our peak on Saturday evening, which is probably just as well. The good news is that after this busy weekend we have probably crossed well into the second half of our harvest.

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.

On Friday morning we opened our shutters under grey, cloudy skies with cool temperatures. All fingers were tightly crossed, as the threat of rain loomed over us.

I mentioned yesterday that I make a post about our grapes, and their quality. For the last two years, we have had what I describe as a-typical vintages – warm, dry summers resulting in low yields and very high alcohol. In 2019 and 2020 it was not uncommon to see albariños of 13% or even 13.5%, whereas several years ago, the ‘norm’ would perhaps be nearer to 12.0% or 12.5%.

So far, it would appear that we will might produce wines that are much nearer to the previous level – my early prediction would be nearer to 12%. The grape must is certainly not as thick and viscous as the last two years, the result of a much cooler summer and just a little rainfall in recent weeks. Obviously we will be able to make a much better judgement of this in a weeks time, when we have all of our crop safely gathered in.

As far as day two, was concerned, it turned out to be a half day of picking, as the rain arrived more or less as forecast. It was really just a short, but significant downpour, and by late afternoon the sky was already clearing. Of course, we did not want to gather damp fruit, and so by lunchtime vineyard work was suspended for the day.

Picking started on Thursday under bright, clear blue skies. Of course, we hope that this sun might continue for a while, but the forecasts are very uncertain to say the least. Our plan for today is to bring our own grapes in on large trucks, with our cases already loaded onto pallets in the vineyard. In this way they can be quickly forklifted on and forklifted off. Less journeys too and from the vineyard (14 pallets per truck), and less labour in the bodega to offload cases. Historically, cases have been unloaded by hand, one by one, and with many of our smaller grape suppliers, this is still the system that we have to use!

Beautiful weather aside, our first day was not without incident. A few technical difficulties with equipment, which, despite having been tested, decided to play up on us. Firstly the machine for cooling the tanks would not start up (we needed to change a digital thermostat). Later, our case washing machine kept cutting out, but then eventually, and quite mysteriously, it decided to work again! (It might have been the moment when I threatened it with a hammer!)

Apart from that, there was no easing gently into the first day – from lunch time we were inundated, and spent virtually the whole day playing catch up, just managing to keep our heads above the water. It was a bit tiring to say the least.

I will write more tomorrow about the grapes, and the quality of our 2021 harvest.

A perfect day to start our 2021 Harvest!

As always, as the harvest arrives, we have to know what the weather is doing, but our simple problem is that the forecasts are proving to be very inaccurate. At the start of this week nearly every weather website said that Tuesday and Wednesday would be 100% rain. Naturally, we have set everything up to start on Thursday. So now, here we are, in the middle of Tuesday, looking out of the window at blue sky – not cloudless, but far from any sign of rain. Even now, these websites are forecasting rain at this time.

With hindsight we probably could have started our harvest at the weekend and enjoyed 3 or 4 days uninterrupted picking, but maybe, if we had taken the risk, then the forecasts could have been accurate. Having said that, it would appear that all of our neighbours have been hedging too, there is very little activity in Salnés at the moment.

In the final days before our 2021 harvest the weather is not being too kind to us. Yesterday evening we had a weird, two-part thunder storm. The first part dry, with no rain, just the thunder and lightning, and the second just heavy rain with no thunder. Fortunately, the wet part didn’t last too long.

This morning we have had a few odd showers, or the threat of showers and the whole region is simply cool and overcast. More rain is forecast in the coming days, but we hope that the worst might be behind us before we start picking some time next week (we think).

Meanwhile, inside the bodega, we are almost ready to start! Everything has been thoroughly washed, cleaned and polished, and we are now just in the midst of testing our systems – pumps, temperature control, etc., in preparation for the onslaught!

Whilst our pre-harvest work is well under way, cleaning equipment in the bodega and cutting grass in the vineyards etc., the bodega itself is surrounded by storms! The first day of September has bought a sudden downturn to the weather – yesterday very much a beach day, and today very much not. At this moment it is not actually raining, albeit we can hear the odd rumble of thunder in the distance, but this in itself, is not the most worrying development.

Yesterday evening, in our Provincial capital of Pontevedra (about 20km from the bodega) we had hail storms! Including some quite sizeable pieces (see photo), certainly enough to do some serious damage if they were to fall in the wrong areas. We have already witnessed some serious hail damage in both the Ribera del Duero and the Loire Valley in France a couple of months ago, and so we have our fingers firmly crossed that this type of event is not repeated here. Unfortunately, with hailstorms they are not only completely unpredictable, but they are often also very localised, some vineyards being hit, whilst other neighbouring vineyards are not. It really is in the lap of the weather Gods.

Tomorrow we will make our last bottling before the harvest. Thankfully our wine sales has been pretty buoyant for the last few months as customers have been re-stocking their cellars after lockdown. Also, it would seem, that at least some enthusiastic consumers have been making up for lost time, albeit that we would never condone overindulgence in alcohol.

In other news or local weather has been more favourable over the last couple of weeks. Our vineyards have been benefitting from some warm sunshine with temperatures into the mid-20’s C (75-80°F), indeed, in the last couple of the mercury has touched 30°C (86°F). Although we have enjoyed some sunshine before, it has never been exceptionally warm, and so we really needed this extra boost of heat to ripen our fruit.

As the harvest draws closer (we estimate around the second of September), we now turn our attention to preparing the wine cellar. Over the next couple of weeks every tank, every hose, every floor, everything in the cellar has to be deep cleaned. We also need to have all our winemaking materials on hand (orders already placed), and every machine and pump that we use has to be cleaned and tested. We try to anticipate everything, leaving as little as possible to chance.