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.

Apart from only one or two isolated showers over the last two or three months there has been no significant rainfall at all this summer. Of course, this means that our local fields and forests are all tinder dry, and in a very dangerous state. Despite warnings from local government (including overhead gantries on our motorways) warning of the risks, this arid, dry ground finally succumbed to the flames….

We have vineyards to the rear and side of our bodega, and behind that there is a wooded copse of mainly eucalyptus (not indigenous, but a species that accounts for between 30-40% of all Galician forests). Yesterday evening, for reasons that we may never know, these trees caught fire!

An alert neighbour jumped our fence, raised the alarm, and within a short time we had two fire appliances, the Guarda Civil, the Xunta de Galicia and even the local mayor in attendance. I assume that, owing to the proximity of housing, and not to mention, a bodega, these were soon joined by two fire fighting aircraft and a helicopter. We certainly cannot complain about the reaction of our local services.

Within an hour or so, it was under control, and despite a brief second flare up, it was eventually extinguished completely. Although the fire reached right up to the perimeter wall of the vineyard, we do not believe that any fruit was actually lost, but we will make a full assessment early next week. Of course, the other thing that we may have to take into account is smoke damage. It is not completely unheard of for smoke to add a slight taint to a wine (but not in a nice way). We will certainly have to keep this in mind this when harvesting.

(Just to put the danger into perspective the photo in this post was taken from the back wall of our bodega)

After the catastrophe of hail about a month ago, the second half of May provided us with more favourable conditions. After a dry, warm sunny fortnight during the second half of the month, our flowering passed off without further incident. Now that we have fruit set, we are perhaps seeing some of the side effects of the inclement weather. It appears that some of the newly formed bunches might not be as dense as normal, with fewer berries, known as ‘coulure’ in France. This would not necessarily reduce the quality of the wine, but may indeed reduce the quantity, simply because there are less grapes in each bunch.

One of the most time consuming jobs of the year is pruning, and once that is behind us, we can start to catch up on other jobs both inside and outside the cellar, that have been put on hold. Springtime, is, hopefully, a time when our customers stock up on wine for the summer, and fortunately there has been a steady flow of orders coming in. There has been a fair amount of bottling and labelling going on (we often bottle our wines without any labels at all, as so many different markets have their own, individual labelling requirements and have to be prepared to order).

After more than six months of lees ageing it is also the time of year that we start to rack the first tanks of last years harvest. Of course, new labels also have to be printed in preparation for the release of our first 2025’s.