Whilst we are already a week into the New Year, the Christmas holiday has only just ended here in Spain. Yesterday, 6th January, was Reyes, known outside Spain as Epiphany. which celebrates the baptism of Jesus and is also known for the visit of the Three Kings. Some Spanish households still celebrate Reyes rather than Christmas, and gifts are exchanged on 6th January. This year, as 6th falls on a Sunday, some autonomies of Spain will have an additional ‘festivo’ day today – 7th January – but not here in Galicia, it is a normal working day.

Owing to this extended holiday, some businesses are only returning to full production this week, including ourselves, as many of our team return from their break. Thankfully they will be greeted by a busy month! To start the New Year we have some pretty large orders in the pipeline, that will necessitate at least two bottlings during the month of January. Of course, it’s always nice to start the year with a few orders in the book, but our longer-term goal will be to maintain this momentum throughout the year!

As we start to recover from the upheaval of the holiday period (and perhaps a little over indulgence – in my case turkey saturation), we are now putting our feet up for a few days. Our cellar doors still remain closed, taking full advantage of the usual seasonal lull in business.

The other good news is that over the Christmas holidays I have rediscovered wine tasting! Tasting had been such a big part of my life for so many years that I had really started to take it for granted – until earlier this year. In March I embarked on a course of dental treatment, which (I didn’t realise at the time), would extend for a period of more that 8 months. The real problem was that it entailed living with a mouthful of plastic for the duration, unfortunately making tasting much more challenging, and even slightly awkward. Not completely impossible, just difficult.

Shortly before the Christmas break, I received a phone call, just as I was leaving the bodega. Within 20 minutes I was in the dentist’s chair, having the final procedure carried out and the plastic finally removed from my mouth. Normality had been restored, and thankfully, just in time for the holidays!

Once again, I can fully appreciate the nuances of wine, but now with a newly invigorated enthusiasm.

First of all I have to wish a very Merry Christmas to anyone who might just be bored enough to read this post on Christmas Day!

As is the tradition in Spain (and in many parts of Europe), the Christmas meal is eaten very late in the evening of 24th December. In our own multi-cultural household we compromise, by having dinner on 24th, but perhaps just a little more to an English timetable, starting at around 8pm. This year we opted for a turkey dinner, but as always, with the typical Spanish seafood starter (often a meal in itself, the main course often being less important).

Wine, of course, plays an important part in our household. In 2018 our aperitif was the limited release of Tio Pepe Fino ‘en rama’ (we drink a lot of fino and manzanilla throughout the year). With the seafood we had an astonishing 2013 Castro Martin Family Estate. This was made more astonishing when we consider that 2013 was not really a great vintage. Prolonged rainfall in the period before picking meant big adjustments to the pressing and winemaking – pressing for example, was limited to minutes, making this vintage almost a ‘first press’ wine. However, there was no hint whatsoever of dilution in this bottle – simply delicious.

The star of the show, as always, was reserved for the main course – a 1992 Corton Charlemagne from Domaine Michel Juillot. The older bottles in my cellar are usually made by people that I know, and have visited regularly over the years – Juillot, however, is not one of them!

The wine itself was bright gold in colour, but not a deep gold. A very full, ripe nose, still showing fruit, but with notes of caramel (to be expected in a 26 years old wine). Full in the mouth, with no hint of oxidation, I was really amazed that this wine was still full of ripe, honeyed apricot fruit, but balanced by a steely elegance, finesse and just a touch of lemon acidity. Of course, this type of wine only serves to prove that pedigree, and a skilled winemaker, can, and will, always make wine that is capable of lasting the course (assuming correct storage).

You can call me old-fashioned, you can even call me Christian, but I openly admit that I still celebrate Christmas. My tree is up, my stocking is ready to be stuffed, and my Christmas Turkey is now on order in readiness for the big day! True, the original sentiment might be a bit lost these days, but hopefully, it still spreads much happiness, joy and goodwill to people around the globe.

For us, our ‘Christmas rush’ finished a while ago, as orders were sent out to different places around the world – including several pallets of a stonkingly good Castro Martin Family Estate 2017 dispatched to Australia. Of course they could be enjoying this as they celebrate Christmas on the beach – almost a million miles from a wild, wet and windswept Galicia! (Only this morning I got so wet walking across Pontevedra that a full change of clothes was required – despite the shelter of a very large, and thankfully very strong, golf umbrella).

My Christmas menu for this year is already decided, leaving only a few days to decide on the Christmas wines (albeit that Castro Martin will certainly feature among them).

Often, when I meet or talk to friends from the UK they ask me what the weather is like in Galicia (so it’s not only me that is obsessed by the weather). Apart from a couple of recent climate aberrations, my reply is usually the same. It’s actually quite similar to the UK, but maybe a few degrees warmer. (I think the majority believe that I am living in something more akin to a Mediterranean climate and that the sun shines every day, and so they are usually quite surprised by my answer).

The fact is that our climate is quite moderate, not excessively cold, nor excessively hot, the significant factor being the damp and often penetrating humidity that we have pretty much year round. This is, of course, why our D.O. does not really produce organic or biodynamic wines – sustainable yes, but organic very, very difficult, if not impossible.

Going back to my original point, I took a quick photo of my TV screen this morning, which rather illustrates my theory. Many of the weather systems (usually arriving from the Atlantic), have fronts extending from southwest to northeast. As you will see from the forecast, this means that weather arriving in the UK, often clips across our location in Northwest Spain as well as the Bay of Biscay before hitting UK shores. Obviously, the slightly higher average temperature comes simply from being that bit closer to the equator. Please note that the rest of Spain is bathed in winter sun under a High Pressure system!

Without doubt, the single most labourious and time consuming job that we face every year is the pruning. It usually extends (in all weathers) from November through until February or March – pretty much the moment at which our vines are ready to spring into life once again. It’s a never ending cycle!

Most people would complain after pruning a few roses or an odd tree or two in their garden, but imagine facing 11 hectares (25 acres) of tangled vine plants that all have to be cut carefully and accurately. I really can’t emphasise enough what a tough and thankless job this really is – without even mentioning inclement weather.

Just imagine for a second walking into our bodega vineyard featured in today’s photo and thinking, quite simply, where do I begin?! (And this photo represents only a hundred square metres or so)

Rias Baixas is certainly well-known for its use of the ‘pergola’ system of vine training. Overhead wires stretched between posts (often hewn from the local granite) looking rather like the staves on a page of music. As the vines grow and are trained along the wires then, inevitably, they are placed under a considerable amount of stress, mostly from the shear weight of the canopy.

These days the wires are made from galvanised steel or stainless steel, but even so, they are still prone to ageing and eventually need replacing…. so who you gonna call? The ‘wire man’ (alambrador) of course! The profession of alambrador is highly specialised and therefore the few, skilled artisans still using traditional methods, are always very much in demand. This is compounded by fact that their repair work is nearly always carried out in winter, when the vines are dormant and there is no dense vegetation to contend with. (During the summer months alambradors are usually only called in case of emergency, for example when a wire actually breaks, or perhaps a post is damaged by a tractor – as has happened to us a couple of times over the years).

To enable his access to our Cunchidos vineyard, our own guys had to move in swiftly and carry out the pruning and remove the old canopy in record time – we simply couldn’t afford to miss the appointment! Of course the only other handicap that we encounter in winter is the weather. Alambradors can’t really work very effectively in the rain, and so for the last few days they have been working on and off dodging the showers.

This morning I was shocked (quite literally) to discover that the bodega had been taken over by none other than Johnny English (aka Rowan Atkinson)! I entered the office at just before 9am when daylight had barely arrived, and the office was almost completely dark. Sitting in my chair was the silhouette of a person, which at first glance made my heart skip a beat. It wasn’t until I turned on the light that it immediately became apparent that it was merely a (life-sized) cardboard cutout!

Someone had managed to acquire a cutout of Johnny English (apparently from a local cinema) and decided that it would be fun to seat it at my desk… which of course it was. I can only assume that the joke was somehow related to my Nationality rather than the fact that I am as clumsy, awkward and dysfunctional as Mr Bean himself!

So, the 2018 holiday season started last Thursday in the United States with Thanksgiving, quickly followed by the inescapable ‘shopping’ holidays of Black Friday and then Cyber Monday. Of course, these shopping events are no longer limited to within U.S. shores as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now a worldwide phenomenon (even if people have no clue, and really don’t care where they originate from). The other feature is, of course, that these ‘sales’ are quite protracted, and not simply limited to the Friday and the Monday. Offers often extend for a fortnight or more, encompassing every possible type of business – hotels, travel, pharmacies, bed linen, food stores – you name it and there’s an offer on the table. A great opportunity for early Christmas shopping!

Locally, it appears that at least one of our local mayors has also been swept up in the fervour of Christmas. The streets of Vigo are now adorned with a Christmas light show costing more than one million Euros! When he announced the lights, the mayor said that Vigo would surpass Christmas in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin (a bold claim indeed for a small provincial city)! His apparent extravagance has certainly raised a few eyebrows, but at Sunday’s inauguration (when the mayor inexplicably attempted to make his speech in English), he claimed that local businesses would benefit hugely from local tourism. Judging by the crowds, he might actually have a point!

Our cellar team are finally coming to the end of the post-harvest deep clean (only started once all fermentations were complete and tanks could be closed and secured). I walked into one of tank storage rooms this morning, and for a split second it almost looked like it had been snowing. The tanks and the floor were veiled in white – but of course, it wasn’t snow!

We have a special cleaning product for stainless steel which is applied by machine as a foam. Just to clarify for a moment, all the cleaning products that we use are both approved for use in food (wine) production areas, and are environmentally friendly.

Not only do all the wine making products that we use have to be approved and recorded, but this also applies to cleaning materials. These days every process and product has to be recorded – it is part of what is known as traceability. Heaven forbid, if something should go wrong, and there is a problem with one of our wines, then not only can the entire batch be withdrawn from sale, but we can then look back through our records, tracing back, if necessary, to the origin of every grape that went into a particular bottle. That’s what traceability is all about – consumer protection.