I make no apologies for writing about the weather again, as, for all winemakers, this is perhaps the single most important factor in determining the quality of everything that they do. It’s much easier to make a poor wine from good grapes than it is making a good wine from poor quality grapes. Although not totally impossible, it is certainly much more of a challenge.

It was only a week or so I posted that the weather had been kind to us, and had virtually saved the flowering, just as things were starting to look ominous. Now I find myself complaining that we do really need some summer weather to kick in. Whilst parts of the world are baking (including the UK as I write this), Galicia has been quite chilly to say the least. One of the main factors behind this has been the wind, persistently blowing from the north, and adding a chill to even some of the sunniest days.

On Monday we did have at least one summer’s day, with blue skies and temperatures actually pushing 30°C (86°F), but that was very short lived. Yesterday, Tuesday, it was misty, damp and cold probably not even reaching 20°C (68°F). I suppose that this is part of the frustration, the continued cool temperatures and our summer never really getting any foothold as yet.

Having said all this, I did have a sneaking suspicion that in a few weeks I might actually be begging for some cooler weather… such is the way of our changing climate.

Breaking News!

DECANTER WORLD WINE AWARDS 2024

Once again our Castro Martin Family Estate has been recognised for it’s quality. In the extremely tough, well-judged and highly respected World Wine Awards, it has been awarded 92 points and a Silver Medal.

This wine had already received 91 points at a tasting of Spanish Wines in Decanter just a few months ago (so both they, and the wine, are at least consistent!).

Another top accolade of  93 points came from Tim Atkin MW, who also rated the wine as ‘Best value white wine of the year’.

92 points were also awarded by both the Wine Enthusiast (in the U.S) and the Guia Gourmets 2024 (here in Spain). Not a bad haul for one vintage!

The other good news is that we also still have stock of this wine to sell!

A couple of weeks ago the late spring weather was still pretty bleak, too much rain and unseasonably cool temperatures, really not the best conditions for flowering. Then, suddenly, almost in answer to our prayers, the rain stopped, the sun came out and we enjoyed just over a week of warm weather. It was (quite literally), the right weather at exactly the time that we needed it. We must have some friends in high places! Finally, the long and short of it is that the flowering was saved, and passed off better than we had dared hope just a week or two earlier.

This spell of fine weather came to a fairly abrupt end, and was marked by thunderstorms, albeit more in the south of our denomination (Condado and Rosal). Some of these storms were accompanied by our worst enemy – hail. Usually hailstorms are very localised, and despite today’s video having been shot the the Condado region, I have not heard any reports of damage to vineyards. The Salnés Valley did have rain, but luckily we seem to have escaped the dreaded hail (he says, touching wood!).

Now that flowering is finally over we can calculate, more or less, the timing of this year’s harvest. At this point in time we are looking at the very middle of September for our ’24 vendimia.

I am now really starting to think that the people who deny climate change must be made from the same mould as the flat-earthers (and should probably all be wearing protective hats made out out of tinfoil). Every day on our TV screens we see an increasing number of natural disasters, often in extremes. If it’s not catastrophic floods, then it’s severe drought, that can, in turn, leads to dreadful wild fires. All too often we witness destruction of property, the ruination of livelihoods and nearly always death.

I should say that here in Galicia we have been lucky (so far, and I am touching wood as I write this). Whilst we have witnessed unseasonal weather, heat when it should be cold and vice-versa, we have still, somehow, managed to escape largely unscathed. Of course, being fruit farmers, these unpredictable conditions do cause us problems and can easily interfere with the growth and development cycle of our grapes. Today, for example, we are already into the third week of May and the outside temperature is barely into double figures (°C). Apart from that, we have rain showers stopping and starting every 10-15 minutes. Also, don’t forget, that it is also the time of year for flowering and so, quite obviously, these are far from ideal conditions. We will simply have to wait to see what transpires over the next week or two.

To change the subject completely, today’s picture shows one of the world’s most ‘over-constructed’ car parks, built by our local council (almost in the middle of nowhere)! The original piece of waste ground was already an area of concrete, and now, after about 18 months work by a team of perhaps ten or a dozen workers, it is now simply a new piece of concrete with lines painted on it! Admittedly they have added lighting, but I feel quite strongly that the amount of time and money invested on this project (paid by our local taxes) has been largely wasted. Rant over for today!

After spending six months resting on their lees the first wines of 2023 are now being prepared. However, as we still have good stocks of our (fantastic) 2022 Castro Martin Family Estate, the tanks which have been selected for this special wine will not be touched, perhaps for another few months at least.

Although we only make a mono-varietal albariño wine not every tank is identical, there are many variations, usually dependant upon the original source vineyard used to make each tank. For this reason, we always select a number of tanks according to their different attributes – flavours, textures, structure, balance etc.

I always equate this process to cooking, taking a number of ‘ingredients’ and trying to imagine how they might compliment each other when put together, but even more importantly, how they might evolve over time. There is a lot of trial and error involved, based almost entirely on the taste of each sample blend that we try. Once the final mix is decided, it is then down to the ‘simple’ task of moving thousands of litres of wine around the cellar, akin to one huge game of chess!

Of course, these wines need to be racked into clean tanks anyway (to separate the clean wine from their lees), and so by blending at this moment we can actually kill two birds with one stone (and thus minimise the number of times that each tank is moved). In some cases, these wines may never be moved again until they are actually bottled.

To be honest, blending is one of my favourite jobs of the year as there is always a great deal of satisfaction in tasting the ‘finished’ wines (after allowing some days for the individual component wines to marry together completely).

Meanwhile, in the vineyards, it is time to grub up and replant a few vines. These may have come to the end of their working life or perhaps simply started to die off, which sometimes happens. The weather over the last three weeks or so has been must better, with dry, sunny days many of which were tempered a little by cold easterly or northerly winds. Unfortunately, this is set to change in the coming days as yet more rain looms just over the horizon.

This morning I was in the vineyard behind our Bodega, mostly to check on the progress of our vines. The rain has finally stopped, and the forecast tells us that the week ahead should be bright and dry… we shall see! After such a prolonged period of cold, wet weather we have just made our first, precautionary, treatment of the year, a small dose of sulphur. Clearly, spraying ‘contact’ treatments in wet conditions would be of no use, and a complete waste of both time and money. Now we simply have to take full advantage of the dry conditions. Anyway, it seems that the plants are healthy and that growth is already quite rapid (a combination of sun and moisture in the soil).

Whilst I was surveying the vines I caught sight of our young oak trees, which 12 or 13 years after being mere acorns, have now grown into something much more substantial (see today’s photo). You may not recall, but the significance of these young trees (to us at least) is that the acorns themselves were gathered from the white oaks newly planted at the 9/11 memorial in New York. I guess that, strictly speaking, we maybe should not have imported acorns in our luggage, but to be honest, we are now quite happy that we did.

We have now just passed the Spring Equinox and this weekend it will be time to change our clocks to ‘summertime’.

Having said that, as the Easter weekend approaches, our spring weather continues to be erratic. After a couple of day of warm sunshine, we have now returned to our more usual grey skies, showers and much colder temperatures. The forecast for this holiday week is for rain and more cold weather, which is not great for local tourism as some visitors may well be discouraged from even coming at all.

Of course, Galicia is known as being a part of ‘Green Spain’ where we have far more rainfall than other regions. I truly believe that many foreign visitors to Spain (and also this verdant corner of Spain) come with the preconception that Spain is always hot, that it is the land of “sun, sand and sangria”. As I look out of my window at this moment, I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth!

From a wine producing point of view, our hope now is that this combination of very cold, wet conditions does not produce hail, as the new buds of this year’s new growth have already appeared in our vineyards. As always, we simply have to keep our fingers crossed.

Back in February I said that, whilst the weather had been warm that it was not exceptional… I was wrong. We have just learned today that February 2024 was the warmest February ever recorded, extending the run of monthly records to nine in a row. This is, of course, can be attributed to global warming (where greenhouse gas emissions are trapping the heat). Temperatures in 2023/2024 were also boosted by an ‘El Niño’ weather event. The warming gases helped to push the monthly average about 1.77C warmer than “pre-industrial” times (before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels).

March, however, has seen a drop in temperature – both daytime and during the night. This comes as a slight relief to us in that, had the February trend continued, there was a danger that budding in our vineyards would take place even before pruning is completed – really not good for the plants. Quite apart from that, assuming that this cycle continued we may well have been harvesting our grapes in mid-August, which for our area is unheard of. (Our earliest recorded harvests have been at the very tail-end of August, but never earlier than this).

Unrelated to this was an innocuous accident that took place, whereby our vineyard manager has badly sprained his ankle on his way to work. This was at the very end of January, and he has not worked since then, despite the fact that he is desperate to come back. Winter is one of the busiest times in our vineyards (owing to the pruning), so this really could not have happened at a worse time for us.

It’s been a fairly quiet start to the New Year, although a few customers have been stocking up after the Holidays, which is always welcome at this time of year.

For us, the Christmas and New Year period will go down as the season of techie nightmares! For long periods of the holiday period both Angela and I suffered from both software and hardware issues meaning that we did not have access to our computers and/or files, but each for completely different reasons. Anyway, it appears that these trials and tribulations are mostly behind us, and so we can now move forward into 2024.

January itself was mostly unsettled and quite wet, which, of course, is only to expected in Galicia at this time of year. Having said that, since the end of the month and now into February the temperatures have been unseasonably warm, up to a high of around 21°C (70°F). Whilst this is not particularly extreme, it only goes to show how variable and unpredictable our weather can be, and also that forecasts these days, are not always accurate.

Whilst the sunshine itself is quite welcome, the warmth is not good for our vineyards. This should be a dormant period, and the danger is, that if these very mild conditions persist, then the vines themselves might start to bud too early, exposing them to the threat of frost should temperatures suddenly fall.

After two months of rain, it appears that the last two weeks of December might actually be a little more pleasant. Cold, but at least dry and sunny. Indeed, in the last few days we have seen our first frosts of winter, which are always welcomed in our vineyards as a way of killing at least a few pests. These cold temperatures also reduce the vine’s metabolic activity, conserving energy that can be used for growth and fruit production during over the coming year.

Inside the bodega it has been slightly traumatic in the last week or two. My business laptop overheated (a replacement battery was at fault, although at least it didn’t explode, as sometimes can happen!). The keyboard was damaged and so I have been working with a USB keyboard and no battery at all ever since. Finding a new laptop is more difficult than you would think. It is almost impossible to buy a new laptop in Spain with an English keyboard. To cut a long story short I bought one in the Republic of Ireland, which I am now still in the midst of setting up.

On top of all this the WhatsApp account on Angela’s mobile phone was hacked a day or two ago. This might not sound to bad, but the hackers can do a lot more damage than you might think and trying to contact WhatsApp by any means is more or less futile. They simply send you into a loop of never ending, and mostly useless suggestions. In the meantime the hackers are soliciting money from Angela’s contacts by any number of different rouses. The lesson is quite clear – NEVER click on any link in any message unless you know that it is completely legitimate.

After all these trials and tribulations the only thing now left to say is, enjoy the Holidays and have a healthy, safe and Happy New Year.