Our usual Christmas family get together was put on hold this year, for one simple reason…. flu. As you will know from the news, there is a pretty contagious flu virus sweeping around parts of Europe, including Spain, and despite pre-emptive injections, it can still leave you feeling pretty bad. Angela, for example, had been vaccinated but still spent a day or two in bed suffering from the effects. Despite our best efforts (masks etc.), this was quickly passed on to our daughter!

It wasn’t until 30th December that everyone had recovered sufficiently to sit down and enjoy a meal. So, after a little replacement shopping we managed to enjoy our planned Christmas menu, washed down by a couple of half decent wines (see photo).

Of course, our bodega has had an extended closure over this period as the country celebrates three holidays – Christmas, New Year and Reyes. Business will resume on 7th January. In the meantime, we wish you all Happy Holidays!

Firstly, and quite simply, a Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends and customers! I hope I do not offend by using a backdrop of NYC, but I have to confess that the majority of our sales in the U.S. are focused around NYC and NJ.

It has been a while since my last post, quite simply because, once the dust has settled from our harvest, there is actually not a lot happening. After this frantic period (and the clean up afterwards), things always seem quite calm and relaxed by comparison. The 2025 wines are resting quietly on their lees, and after a few tastings I am happy to say that we are more than satisfied with the outcome. Outside the bodega, the pruning is now underway, and will probably continue for the next two or three months.

The weather has been probably a bit too mild so far this autumn, with just a handful of cold days in the last week or so. Rainfall has been on and off but mostly light apart from two recent Atlantic storms that produced some days of really torrential rain. Luckily there was no apparent flooding.

So, revisiting my opening line for one moment I would just like to remind you that Albariño goes extremely well with turkey!

The process of wine making demands that you have your wits about you at all times, with numerous tanks all at slightly different stages of their evolution. The progress from grape must to wine is measured by density, which it turn can be speeded up or slowed down by temperature control. Apart from the type of yeast we decide to use (which can affect the style a little), the rest of our quality comes from the grape. It is probably fair to say that we have two different characters in 2025, originating from fruit that was picked before the rain, and fruit picked after. (Fortunately, and quite deliberately, much of our fruit was picked before). However, we will not make too many judgements before our fermentations are over, and even then, it will probably be too soon.

A big difference that we have noticed in the cellar is the disparity in progress between tanks. Normally we would have quite a steady flow of work, moving smoothly from one tank to the next. This year, for example, we have had a period of 12 days from starting the first of our fermentations to the last one, which is not long underway.

The fermentations are fascinating, and often a little different from tank to tank. Apart from measuring the densities, judgement can also be made from the visual aspect, and notes of how a tank actually appears is also recorded. My favourite is what I call the ‘brain’ foam. Take a look at today’s video and you might see what I mean.

After many long hard hours in the vineyards, and now many more hours just beginning in the cellar, the picking has finally come to an end. In one sense we have been lucky in that all our machinery, vehicles and equipment worked exactly as they should. Our experienced team both inside and outside the cellar have worked with both enthusiasm and professionalism, for which we sincerely thank them. Of course the only negative to this year’s campaign has been the weather, with about three and a half days lost to rain; which has made it very frustrating and drawn-out for everyone involved. It’s sometimes difficult to remember that we are just, in fact, farmers, and as such, completely in the lap of the weather Gods. Having said that we have been lucky to dodge the extreme drought and arid conditions of some other parts of Spain, and in the end gathered in a bountiful and pretty good quality harvest. Exactly how good we have yet to see.

At the end of the last day, as always, we have to wait until the last grapes are gathered in before charging the presses. The smallest amount that we can load in any press is about 3,000 kilos; any less would result in serious and expensive damage to the machine. As if it had been planned in advance, the kilos that had actually arrived by the end of the day, were the perfect amount for pressing, and within an hour or two of being hanging on our our vines, the final kilos had been loaded, pressed, and the resulting grape must finally transferred to our tanks. With a collective sigh of relief, the 2025 harvest was finally over. (I can been seen here waving goodbye to yet another campaign!)

Hopefully, we are now entering the last day or two of picking grapes – it has certainly been a long haul this year, seemingly never ending. The forecast for today and the next few days is for blue skies and warm sunshine, so the weather should no longer be an obstacle. Today’s picture serves as confirmation of the much improved conditions!

There is an interesting issue that has arisen in the last day or so; the yields. We have been quite lucky so far, in that, despite the rain, there has been no real sign of any rot….. however, we have noticed that the individual cases that we use for picking are getting heavier. The fruit has now started to absorb more of the rainwater, as it seeps down and finally reaches the roots. Obviously, this problem has only occurred during the last throws of the harvest, but we do at least, know a way in which we can compensate slightly – in the pressing. By reducing, the time of each pressing cycle, and also reducing the pressure that the machine actually uses, we can simply take more of the free run juice and that of the first pressings. In the end, it is simply a shorter more gentle pressing, only retaining the very best juice of each cycle.

At the end of the day, with more tanks filled, we have our fingers crossed that tomorrow could be our final day!

Well, the absence of a post on Sunday was for a very simple reason…. more rain! The light rain that had started on Saturday night continued throughout Sunday, alternating between rain and ‘mizzle’ (mist/drizzle). Enforced, random rain breaks are not only annoying, but throw everything out of sync.  Normally there is a continuous workflow, from vineyard to cellar to vinification: this year it is much more staccato than legato.

Monday, was also slightly problematic, the mizzle continuing until about 10am. In the end we were able to pick for just a half day, starting after lunch at about 2pm and working through. Fortunately, from what we can see, the rain should now be behind us and we should be able to complete the last day or two without any further breaks.

One of the by-products of our production is the grape pomace (‘marc’ in French or ‘bagazo’ in Spanish), These are the grapes skins, pips and stalks left behind after pressing. Until recently, the pomace sold without any problem to distilleries, who paid a few cents a kilo for distillation into aguardiente, the Spanish equivalent of eau-de-vie or grappa. However, with the rapid decline of these spirit sales, we are no longer able to sell our pomace, and now have to pay to have it (ecologically) removed. Today’s video shows our presses (on the upper floor), being unloaded and delivering the pomace directly into containers below, ready to be removed.

Today, with the weather seemingly set fair, is pretty much a ‘mopping up’ operation for our smaller vineyards. To complete those not quite finished before (sometimes because of weather, or maybe logistics), and to also pick the final, smaller locations. Normally, the way we rotate through our different vineyard sites would be dictated by maturity of the fruit, in the different sections or parcels. Now it is almost the reverse, reviewing the fruit and prioritising any parcel that maybe be in even the slightest danger of rot or disease; maturity is really not an issue this year.

By the end of the day, curtailed by a little light rain, every small vineyard had been completed, and the final count for the day revealed that our team had managed to pick 2-3,000 kg more than we had anticipated. An excellent result.

After two days of rain and a slightly grey start the sun finally returned to our vineyards. Tractor and trailers filled with grapes appeared on our streets once more. We are hoping that this period of rain might now be behind us, even though the forecast for the next day or two is variable, and differs between different websites. There is always a temptation to believe the most optimistic forecasts, but over the years I have more or less worked out which are the most reliable. Having said all that (perhaps because of our proximity to the Ocean), forecasts not only can change very quickly, but can also produce conditions that are very localised. An area of constant sunshine only 10Km from an area of persistent rain… very challenging!

The majority of outside growers (from whom we buy grapes) have largely finished their harvests now, with only a few stragglers outstanding now. Of course the ‘Lion’s Share’ of our harvest comes from our own fincas, and consequently our pickers as working as fast as they can (during yet another year when finding experienced and reliable pickers becomes more and more challenging). Today we are tackling one of our local vineyards known as Cuchidos, perhaps less than 2km from the bodega, and hopefully, we should be able to complete this in one day.

Today’s photo shows One Bunch (or Juan Racimo as he is known to his Spanish friends), that weighs in at nearly 1kg. As you can see, despite the adverse weather, it is still completely healthy.

Unfortunately, the forecast was right. Once the final grapes were safely gathered in on Tuesday evening, the rain continued for two days. It did not rain continuously but rather in sporadic downpours; certainly enough to stop us from picking.

Having said that, the grape must in our tanks still needed our attention. The first tanks of 2025 have now been seeded and the fermentations are underway. Re-hydrating the yeasts and then slowly adding grape must certainly produces some dramatic reactions, and watching the yeasts starting their work (in the large containers we use for mixing), can be quite mesmerising. As you can see from today’s photos can produce some very distinct patterns. Perhaps it is my imagination but the picture on the left, for me, resembles the top of a cup cake and the one on the right, an old fashioned cottage loaf.

The forecast predicts that we can resume on Friday – fingers crossed.

There is a forecast of rain starting at around 2pm today, but with plenty of fruit still to collect we really need to continue. The real problem is that once this rain starts, it could possibly continue for two and a half days. After such a long, dry summer there is a certain irony to this dramatic change. The first sprinklings of rain were actually welcomed (as I have mentioned before), but now there is a real danger that this will become detrimental to the grapes still waiting to be collected. Our focus this morning will be on gathering fruit whilst also keeping a close eye on the skies.

Today our picking team is split between three or four smaller vineyards all within a kilometre of the bodega. Once collected, fruit will arrive in our bodega perhaps within minutes, certainly not hours. We run a continuous shuttle of tractors and vans. It should be mentioned, at this time that the fruit that we are collecting is still perfectly healthy.

At the back of our wine cellar we have a view of the Atlantic Ocean to our west, and by early afternoon we could see the skies slowly darkening. Eventually a grey ‘curtain’ of rain could be seen approaching in the distance, but very luckily, it didn’t actually start raining until about 5pm. By that time we had managed to complete almost a full day of harvesting before we were forced to stop.

Now let’s see how accurate the forecast is for tomorrow.