Yesterday my e-mail was so quiet I almost contacted my provider to see if my connection was working properly – I got so desperate that I was almost praying for junk mail!

We must have reached one of the peak holiday weeks, when we receive more out-of-office replies than we do answers.

Please don’t forget that it’s our turn next week, and that the Bodega will be closed for one week. I’m so excited I’ve already packed my bucket and spade!

Have a great holiday wherever you are……

If you look at today’s photo, you might have a bit of a problem working it out – the reason is that I have deliberately loaded it upside-down!

It just stuck me when I took this snap, that there were almost as many leaves on the ground as there were on the pergolas overhead. The reason? Well, we believe quite simply that quality is created in the vineyard, and so during the summer months we spend a lot of time working on the canopy, making sure that our fruit gets the best possible exposure. Not only that, but we have also done some ‘green harvesting’ this year, which, as I’m sure you know, means removing any excess bunches from the vine before they mature. Of course this simply has the effect of concentrating all the efforts of the plant into the optimum number of bunches.

The hot weather continues, there is no rain on the horizon, and the harvest looms ever closer.

Wouldn’t argriculture be boring if our weather was predictable? There’s a sort of irony in the fact that just a couple of months ago Galicia was awash with rain, whereas now……

Certainly for large parts of June and nearly the whole of July, we have barely seen a drop of rain. With the exception of a thunderstorm at the beginning of the month, July can only be described as hot and windy. For several weeks now, daytime temperatures have been pushing 30°C (86°F) or more, and have only been moderated by winds blowing from the north and the west. The problem is that whilst the breeze is very welcome, it is also very drying and our vineyards are just starting to suffer as a result. The roof of the canopy is showing signs of stress – leaves are wilting a little and are not as verdant as they might normally be in our temperate maritime climate.

For the fruit to evolve properly, we could actually do with a few days of rain just to put us back on track – imagine, an Englishman, praying for a bit of rain!

This weekend the LVIII Albariño Festival was held in the local town of Cambados. Some 43 bodegas set up shop in the town square, selling Albariño, either by the glass or by the bottle to the general public. If you look back to my posts of previous years you will see that Castro Martin actively avoids attending, mostly because the whole event demands a huge amount of work, for little or no return. Most of the ‘tasting’ is conducted at night, and extends well into the early hours, by which time the atmosphere is extremely animated and highly charged to say the least.

Unfortunately this year, possibly for the first time as far as I am aware, the festival was marred by violence, as fighting broke out amongst the crowd – I quote from our local paper as follows:

“El día grande de la Festa do Albariño en Cambados tuvo otra vertiente al margen de la festiva, ya que la jornada de ayer se saldó con varias peleas en las calles de la localidad que acabaron con un joven detenido por agresión. Sobre las once de la mañana se registró una reyerta multitudinaria en un local de copas de la calle de la movida cambadesa, pelea que finalizó con varios heridos por contusiones, y al menos uno de ellos tuvo que ser trasladado al Hospital do Salnés.”

“Un joven de Lugo, Bruno J.S., tuvo que ser trasladado al hospital con una herida en el abdomen por la que sangraba y que, al parecer, se había hecho con un cristal. Por estos hechos fue detenido Cristian C. C., al que los agentes arrestaron acusado de un delito de lesiones.”

To summarise, a “massive brawl” broke out resulting in several people suffering bruises, and one poor man from Lugo admitted to hospital with bleeding from the abdomen, apparently caused by glass.

I do hope that this is not the shape of things to come.

I seem to have been on my soap box quite a lot recently about the effects of alcohol on a minority of consumer’s behaviour, but as we approach mid-summer and the peak of the holiday season, the problem is probably a little more prevalent than usual.
I must start this post by holding my hands up and admitting that the UK, or to be more specific, Brits abroad, lead the world when it comes to alcohol-related bad behaviour, so in a sense I am speaking from the experiences that we have already witnessed with at least some of our own young people.

Phase 1 is what I call the happy phase, when a bit too much alcohol simply leads to over-exuberant, loud, but mostly non-aggressive behaviour – singing in the streets, as it were. From what I have witnessed so far, this is where Galicia seems to be at the moment……. but then, just occasionally, the first signs of Phase 2 start to appear.

Phase 2 is where a little mischief creeps in – seemingly innocent fun to the perpetrators, but actions that can have a lasting effect on the community. This morning for example, there were a couple of litter bins overturned in the street (not by the seagulls), and then I witnessed a group of you men in a local park damaging some children’s swings. I am sure it was not their intention, but the swings were broken nonetheless. To the neutral observer this might simply look like an act of vandalism, even if there was no malice intended.

Phase 3 is the violent phase – where the drinking turns to fighting and general aggression. In all honesty I think that Spain is a very long way from reaching this phase, and hopefully, unlike the Brits, this type of behaviour is not in their general psyche anyway.

Whilst I am confident in saying that probably very few, if any, of the young people that I see in the streets are getting drunk on Albariño, I am still very conscious of the fact that we make and sell alcohol. Seeing it abused in any small way always gives me a very uneasy feeling. We simply do not want the actions of the irresponsible minority spoil it for all of us and damage our industry.

Please enjoy our wines in moderation.

There are still many businesses in Spain (and other hot, European countries) that either close entirely for the month of August, or at the very least, run a reduced service for their customers. Until now, we have not been one of them….

Of course we are not closing for a whole month, but instead will ‘dip our toe in the water’ by closing for just one week to see how it goes. Make a note in your diary – we will be closed from Monday 16th August for one week, re-opening the following Monday, 23rd.

As I have already mentioned quite recently, we are now busy bottling wine, and so if orders do arrive whilst we are away, using this additional stock, we will be able to prepare them very quickly upon our return. Personally, I will be carrying my Blackberry, so will be able to respond to urgent mails, so the only noticeable difference might be that we will not answer the phone, and you may have to leave a message.

We will try it this year and see what happens….

Did you know that Spain, along with Germany and Denmark, is one of the top wind power producers in the European Union? It is now claimed that up to 40% of the country’s total demand is supplied by wind turbines, and as you might imagine, many of them are situated here in Galicia. Many of the rolling hills in the north of our province are dotted with some fairly impressive wind farms (or perhaps ugly wind farms, depending on your point of view). Which ever way you decide to look at them, it is a very green, and sustainable way to produce electricity. Even so, the Spanish Government is not resting on it’s laurels – it is aiming to triple the amount of energy it derives from renewable sources by 2020. Certainly an ambitious target.

I write about this now simply because, for the last week or so, we have endured some fairly persistent, strong winds in our area (ideal for the turbines I would guess). I am not sure about the actual wind speeds, but suffice top say that we certainly had to hang on to our glasses and cutlery during an attempted barbeque lunch yesterday!

You may gather from this story that, despite the strong winds, temperatures have remained high, at around 30°C (86°F), but having said that, there is still something fairly odd happening….. these are warm winds blowing from the north.

I did check on a couple of weather websites before I made this post, just to make sure that it was not just my imagination, but indeed, it would appear that the winds are coming down from the south of Ireland, and across the Bay of Biscay. To date I have no explanation as to why they should be so warm.

In a vain attempt to retain my correct BMI (otherwise known as middle-age spread) I go walking by the sea every morning. The only thing that occasionally spoils this idyllic daily outing, are the young people returning from their nocturnal exertions, usually under the influence of alcohol. I should add that they are never aggressive, but nearly always very loud – even so, as you approach them, you quite naturally get a very uneasy feeling, especially if the group is large.

Now, I have talked about the drinking habits of young Spanish people on many previous occasions, so I will not comment any further on the subject, except to say that any collective drunken behaviour in the streets only serves to add fuel to the anti-alcohol lobby, that could eventually damage our beloved wine industry.

On a lighter note, this morning, for the very first time, I donned one of my numerous Liverpool football shirts to go out walking (it does not usually cause too much offense that early in the morning). And yes, you guessed it, I bumped into one of the above-mentioned groups of young men, who shall we say, were a little worse for wear. By the time we had exchanged a few pleasantries about football, the World Cup and Liverpool FC, I was reluctantly drawn into joining them in a dawn chorus – a Spanish version of Anfield’s famous ‘Torres Bounce’!

Finally, another quick tale vaguely related to football. Yesterday, when I collected my car from the local dealership I noticed that the quality control questionnaire was addressed to a Señor Benni. Closer examination of the invoice revealed the name Benni McCarthy, a footballer who spent a couple of years in our region playing for Celta Vigo. I assume that at some point he must have bought a car from the same garage…. Although McCarthy is not a very common name in these parts, I was most surprised to be confused with him, not just because of the age difference, but also because Señor Benni is a coloured South African gentleman!

The law in Pennsylvania does not allow wine to be sold on shop or supermarket shelves – so what is the answer? Yes, a wine vending machine! Well, you have to give them points for original thinking, even though the machine itself is just a bit complicated.

When I say complicated I don’t just mean navigating your way around the selection of wine on offer, I actually mean the way in which you access a bottle. The first step is to enter your driving licence, which obviously satisfies the age requirement problem – oh, but then you have to prove that the licence is yours – so then the integrated surveillance camera kicks in and does a bit of face recognition to confirm your identity.

Finally the machine checks to see if you are already drunk by using its own breathalyzer system…… perhaps if you fail this test the machine deploys its own handcuffs!

Let’s just hope that once you have gone through all this rigmarole that you remembered to bring your wallet.

I imagine that today’s blog title might have grabbed your attention! Harvest? In July? What on earth is he talking about? Green harvest?

OK, so I confess, I don’t actually mean the harvest itself, but rather the preparations for the 2010 picking, which are under way in the bodega. The last of the 2009 wines have just been racked from their lees, and over the next four weeks we will start a programme of bottling – not only to give us sufficient stock to see us through, but also to start freeing up a few tanks in anticipation of the new vintage.

To be honest there is actually quite a bit of planning that goes into this, as there are certain tanks that we favour for use during the harvest (usually those closest to the pressing room). The trick is that after all the current movements between tanks, we end up with the right amount of space….. in the right place.

Of course we also have to take into account that, because of the extended ageing period of our “sobre lias” wines, we still have quite a high percentage of  the 2009 vintage in the cellar, and so we can’t possibly manage our wine movements without a good deal of forethought. Logistically, it is not quite as easy as you might assume, especially as we go out of our way to move our wines as little as possible. Moving wine = contact with the air = potential oxidation.

And there was you thinking that I spend my summer on the beach!