Well, it’s that time of year again! Over the last few days my writing hand has been aching as I have been busy completing forms to submit our wines for the 2011 wine guides. Even is this electronic age many of these forms are still sent either by fax or by regular mail and so have to be filled out by hand – many of the same details, year-in, year-out.

Indeed the only thing that usually changes are the wine descriptions, and of course the wine samples themselves, but this year we at least have something new to say…… our ‘Sobre Lias’ labelled wines are introduced with the 2009 vintage.

The closing date to submit to many of the guides is the end of June 2010 (for publication in 2011), which means that with the additional ageing that we make ‘on the lees’, the wines are only just ready in time to be considered, and the bottles are sent very last minute.

Yesterday, I prepared no less than four sets of samples (and paperwork), but thankfully this annual chore is now pretty much behind me. As far as I am aware there is only one more publication that needs samples before the end of July – I will wait a little longer before I do this as our 2009 wines are still very young and ‘edgy’ at this stage in their development.

Ambush marketing? Flash mobs? What comes next?…… Dirty dancing??

One of the latest scandals to hit the current World Cup competition arrived in the shape of 36 young girls dressed in bright orange mini-dresses, mingling with Dutch supporters. Their dark secret was that they were actually ‘placed’ there as part of a marketing stunt and were advertising a beer, but unfortnately not the official beer of the tournament – hence the problem.

They were promoting that well known Dutch beer ‘Bavaria’, named after one of Holland’s lesser known ski resorts! (Like you, I would have assumed that this was a German brand). Strangely, from the pictures I have seen, their dresses carried no branding, so how they were actually identified perhaps only Sepp Blatter will be able to explain.

Anyway, having forked out millions of dollars, the marketing people at Budweiser were more than a little upset about this unauthorised advertising attempt, and consequently this group of rather attractive ‘supporters’ were ejected from the stadium.

Apparently this ‘ambush marketing’ as it is known, is being used with increasing frequency, whereby one company will gatecrash a large event in order to promote their product without the usual financial outlay. If only I had known this before I could have gatecrashed a couple of local fiestas myself, brandishing a bottle of Castro Martin Albariño!

It  also makes me wonder – didn’t the real ambush start when the this Dutch beer was named Bavaria?

The grass cutting season is upon us, or should I say the grass slashing season. It was only yesterday when I discovered that the piece of machinery that we use to ‘cut’ grass in the vineyards, technically, is known as a grass slasher. It’s fairly logical really….

The piece of kit (similar to the photo above) that we attach to the back of our tractors does not actually have blades, and therefore does not cut. In reality it uses some fairly heavy duty steel chains that rotate at high speed horizontal to the ground, like a giant strimmer that removes pretty much anything in its path. Of course this includes any small stones or rocks laying on the ground which are ejected like rifle bullets, so you really don’t want to be standing near this machine when it’s working!

Obviously grass ‘slashing’ is a time consuming chore, but for our vineyards we think that it is a much better option than herbicide.

I have been trying hard not to mention football too much (especially after the season that my beloved Liverpool FC have had), but now my heartache and despair is prolonged by the pain of watching my national team perform in the 2010 World Cup.

Our problem appears to be that we over-rate ourselves. Yes, true, we have a great Premier League, with some of the best club sides in the world, but at national level, well, that’s quite a different story…..

On paper at least, we should do well, and if the competition was decided by how much our players earn, then we would certainly be the world champions. The problem is that for some reason when our players pull on an England shirt they perform like a bunch of Sunday League pub footballers. Well, OK, that might appear to be a bit of an exaggeration, but then did you see the goal that the USA scored against us on Saturday?

In recent years this is the third embarrassing goalkeeping gaff that we have been made to endure in serious competition. The first, a keepers ‘fresh-air kick’ in Croatia, allowing the ball to roll over his foot into his own net. The next, another ‘Teflon® Glove’ incident at Wembley, very similar to last night’s debacle. And now this third error in Rustenberg, which may well go down in history for all the wrong reasons. (Neutrals please note that all three blunders were made by three different England ‘International’ goalkeepers)!

Oh, the joys of being an England supporter…..

In the past I have made mention of the labelling requirements on wine bottles, and the fact that the number of warnings is on the increase. I have no complaints about this development.

My friends over at Sandihurst Wines in New Zealand also wrote about labelling on their blog – talking about the need to include wine ‘ingredients’ – the technical breakdown.

Of course the need for technical information is compounded when you add the language requirements of each country to the mix. For example, at the moment we are obliged to include the expression ‘Contains Sulphites’ on our labels, and as the majority of our labels are already printed with text in two languages (English & Spanish), so we have to include this warning in two languages. For the German market we then have to add an additional sticker with this warning in German, to each bottle. And so, as you see, it can potentially become rather complicated.

There is another way around this problem, as demonstrated by the German beer in my photo. Include the information in 14 languages!

This may be an efficient way of dealing with the issue, but I have to say that it is probably a bit over the top, bordering on the slightly ridiculous. The frightening thought is that it demonstrates where we all might end up one day…… I hope not.

Yesterday we had the tinto wine festival in Barrantes – apparently a good time was had by all, despite the local red wine, which I personally don’t really care for.

As you may have gathered I did not actually attend as I was on airport duty, delivering some friends to the tiny airfield at La Coruña International. This idea of airport grandiosity reminds me of arriving at Luton Airport many years ago, when looking out of the aircraft window a huge airport sign boldly declared “Welcome to LA” – after all Luton is so similar to Los Angeles!

Galicia has three “International” airports, which in my opinion is probably two too many. The reason I say this is that all three are only separated by a distance of 160km (100 miles), and are all competing for exactly the same business.

The three different autonomies within our Province that manage these airports never see eye-to-eye, and as a result simply compete on all levels, apparently obsessed with outdoing their neighbour by building the biggest. All three airports are undergoing extensive (and expensive) development and reconstruction, even at a time when the economy, both locally and nationally, is falling apart.

In a way this mirrors the construction boom that has bought Spain to its knees – if you ask yourself the question, is this redevelopment actually needed, then the answer must be a simple, and yet emphatic, no!

To put this into some sort of perspective, take a look at the airports themselves….. At least two of the three airports have no more than around a dozen flights a day – so, on average, probably less than one an hour. Even for this small number they all still require air traffic control, police, fire, security, check-in, baggage handling, catering, maintenance, etc, etc, etc.

La Coruña airport in the north is built on top of a small plateau, and has a very short runway. It can just about handle an Airbus A320, although at 1,900 metres the runway cannot handle an A320 at full take-off weight (2,000 metres is required). With the stong winds and heavy rain often experienced in Coruña, it can be a bit ‘hairy’ to say the least – I swear that Angela and I once landed sideways there! Access to the airport skirts the city and is not easy, and the present car park is a 10 minute walk from the terminal.

Vigo airport is also carved into the side of a hill, and often finds itself shrouded in mist or low cloud, especially during the winter months. This problem has been solved recently by the upgrade to Category III landing equipment (more expense!), and with a runway of 2,400 metres it can comfortably handle the traffic that lands there.

Centrally located, almost equidistant between the two, is Santiago de Compostela – the jewel in the crown of Galician tourism. It boasts a runway of 3,200 metres (which I believe is even long enough to handle jumbo jets), and has a direct motorway link road. The surrounding land is comparatively flat, so there are no real weather issues with this location.

So, why doesn’t Galicia pool its resources and develop one major airport in Santiago? I know quite a number of people who are asking the same question.

Well, grapes might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but we have the makings of some grapes in our vineyards. I would like to tell you that the flowering passed off perfectly, but not quite….. Despite the weather improving hugely from the cool, damp conditions that we had been experiencing, we still had one day of rain in the middle of the flowering – not the most ideal day for pollination.

The one thing that I can say with some degree of certainty is that there are less bunches than last year, so we should expect a smaller harvest. Obviously it would be difficult to predict exactly how much smaller, as there are still so many unknown factors to take into account that will help complete the picture over the coming months – as usual we will just have to sit back and pray.

In addition to the potential size of the havest, we can also work out the approximate date – using the calculation of 100 days from flowering, we should now anticipate a start date towards the end of September. No doubt this will be upon us before we know it, and I will be sitting here writing another vintage report.

Doesn’t time fly when your having fun?

So the koala’s of Galicia will have to look for a new home as part of their habitat is removed……

You may recall that back in January, following a storm, a large Eucalyptus tree was felled, and unfortunately landed in our Bodega vineyard. At the time our neighbour promised that she would move the tree line further away from our fence, and I now happy to tell you that this work has just been completed. Indeed, it was completed much, much quicker than I imagined.

On Thursday morning Angela and I went to talk to the tree fellers (actually there were only two of them – old joke), as they had more or less just started their work. This morning I thought that I would bring my camera to work to capture an action shot of falling trees, and men in hard hats. Not to be – the work had already been completed, so now I just have a photo of a swathe of land without trees, which is not quite as exciting.

The good news is that this means that the vines in the lower section of the vineyard should now enjoy much better exposure to the sun, and also may have slightly less competition when it comes to finding water in the soil. We shall see.

Of course, the Eucalyptus tree is not a native of Galicia, but I think was planted extensively in the early 1980’s to supply wood pulp to the local paper industry. On the plus side (for the paper people at least) it is a fast growing species, whilst on the down side it’s dense plantations are prone to catch fire and burn very easily – our region has suffered from some fairly horrific forest fires as a result.

I read somewhere quite recently, that the sales of Madeira have increased by up to 20% in the last 12 months and that it was making a come back….. for me at least, it has really never been away.

OK, so I have to confess that I am not really too much of a Madeira drinker, but always have a bottle in my kitchen cupboard that I use much more for cooking purposes than I do for quaffing. I guess that this gives my age away, in that Madeira is a pretty old-fashioned, or should I say, traditional cooking ingredient, which quite curiously is extensively used in the French Repertoire de la Cuisine. Anyway, I highly recommend using a less expensive bottle to splash into a tomato based or brown sauce for meat, whilst the good stuff can be reserved for more serious appreciation.

Madeira wine as we know it today actually evolved over centuries, and was developed by a series of ‘happy accidents’. The story begins with the discovery of the island by João Gonçalves – the wonderfully nicknamed O Zarco “the cross-eyed”, in 1418. It was a regular port of call on the busy shipping routes between Europe, the New World and the East Indies. Originally covered by forest (hence it’s name – Madeira meaning ‘wood’ in Portuguese), it was eventually cleared and planted mostly with sugar cane, but also with wheat and a few vines imported by different European settlers.

As the sugar cane market declined, so the wine became more important, and by the middle of the 16th century it started to be exported to America, Brazil, the West Indies and England. This new Madeira wine became a great favourite in America, and its style was already starting to evolve, probably more by accident than by design. On its long sea journeys around the world the wine would be subjected to very high temperatures and start to oxidise within the wooden casks that were used for shipping. This baked, oxidised wine actually becoming such an acquired taste that it was a firm favourite of General Washington, and was drunk to celebrate his inauguration as President of the United States.

It was during the 18th century that alcohol was used to fortify the wine, but again this was not a planned development. As exports were halted by sea battles around the islands, so the stockpiles of wine grew, and in an attempt to preserve their longevity, so the alcohol was added. Yet again this proved to be a popular augmentation, so much so that Madeira was known as the ‘Isle of wine’.

As with many other wine regions, Madeira was devastated by the arrival of both oidium and phylloxera between 1850 and 1870, but in this case, the industry on the island never really recovered, and this fortified wine never regained its previous level of popularity.