No, it’s not the latest Harry Potter book, nor is it an Arnold Schwarzenegger film – it is of course the infamous, if not unpronouncable, Icelandic volcano that is still causing havoc across Europe.

Having escaped completely from the first round of airport closures, many of Spain’s northern airports have now ground to a halt, under this invisible cloud of volcanic ash. Angela and I breathed a collective sigh of relief realising that we had arrived back from the States in the nick of time, just a few days prior to flights being grounded. Well, maybe it wasn’t a complete escape…..

On Friday morning Angela took to the skies again, but this time only as far as Madrid. Although the distance is only around 600km and just under an hour flying time, it takes a good 5 or 6 hours by car, and the train still remains an overnight journey! (And who says that Galicia isn’t a remote corner of Spain?)

Angela is due to fly back on Tuesday evening, but despite meteorologists using computer models to predict which direction the ash cloud will travel, there is no guarantee at this moment in time that our local airports will be re-opened by then. Perhaps it’s just as well there isn’t too much going on in the Bodega at the moment, apart from a bottling scheduled for later this week.

The one thing that I tend to neglect on our blog are the references as to exactly where you can enjoy our wines. We are delighted to be the Albariño supplier to many top wine importers around the world, and in turn, many of them provide wines to some of the worlds most exclusive restaurants. Perhaps I should compile a list?

For example, we have just received news from Holland that we are now listed in the two star Michelin restaurant De Zwethheul, located near Rotterdam. Chef Mario Knight was voted Chef of the Year 2009 by Gault Millau and is a member of the Dutch Guild of Master Chefs. Mario’s cuisine is renowned for its combination of classic simplicity and pure class, but like many of the best things in life, it does not come cheap.

I have to say that I love his philosophy, which is actually quite similar to our own – “Quality survives everything and everyone”.

All I have to do now is plan a visit to Rotterdam.

Well, here we are, fresh off the flight from New York, currently trying to fight sleep and get our body clocks back in sync with Spanish time.

I thought I would try to keep myself awake by making a quick post of one or two of my impressions from our trip – some good, and others not so good.

I will start with the good…..meat! Please remember that we live in the land of fish and seafood here in Galicia, and when they do serve meat, it is nearly always ‘ternera’, which is a slightly anaemic type of beef, rather nearer to veal than I would like, and therefore lacking the real red meat flavour that I often crave.

Of course this means that the minute I step off the plane in places such as NYC, I immediately head for the nearest steakhouse or burger joint, and this trip was no exception. OK, so it’s not good for my colesterol, but in the end this was only a short trip and so my meatfest just a bit of a rare treat. On the beverage side, I have to confess that my first NY burger was washed down with a well chilled American beer, and my delicious prime USDA steak was accompanied by one of my old favourites – Masi’s double-fermented Campofiorin. Sorry, not a Spanish wine in sight (nor even a Californian for that matter).

So that’s one of the highlights done with, and now for the flipside….. our flights with Iberia! Firstly, I have to say that I think they train their cabin crew by allowing them to suck on lemons – they have such sour faces all the time, and hardly ever break into a smile. And then, with their fixed, dour expressions, they tend to give the impression that they are doing you a favour whenever they serve you, and that they would much rather be somewhere else. I fly with Iberia quite a lot, on both domestic and international flights, and I’m afraid to say that this appears to be quite a common trait on the vast majority of my journeys with them.

Next comes their in-flight catering…. they boast a business class menu created by a two star Michelin chef, Sergi Arola, but what they don’t tell you is that the economy class food is prepared by a youth who was trained over the period of one whole weekend in a mobile burger van. It’s pretty grim stuff – the garnish of grey mashed potato really says it all!

By the way, let’s not mention their in-flight “entertainment” – suffice to say they are a little behind the times – the only choice of movie is shown on the single take-it or leave-it channel, on a tiny overhead screen that can be as far as ten rows away from you.

I regret to say that I don’t think that I am alone in my opinion of Iberia, they are generally not very highly rated on the various travellers websites that exist. Complaints seem to be quite frequent, especially when it comes to cabin service.

In future I think that the best option might be to ‘vote with my feet’ as they say, and seek out an alternative airline for my Atlantic crossings.

This week Angela and I fly to the US to visit our importer, and thanks to my faithful Blackberry I will not need to haul my laptop over with me – once again I have to ask myself, where would we be without this amazing technology?

It seems quite funny now when I recall my very first ‘mobile’ telephone. You actually carried it using a shoulder strap because the battery was so huge, and it had an old fashioned handset attached to the base station with a cord – I think it might have been a Panasonic. Of course you could only use it for making phone calls, nothing else, and even then the coverage was fairly patchy despite living in central London, as I did at the time.

These days a phone is not just a phone, it’s a mini-computer, mp3 player, camera, and even a rather small television – unfortunately however, it does not make toast…… yet! Anyway, as always, I digress.

Perhaps the only limitation of a Blackberry is the screen size, which is a bit small for reading attachments etc., and does not really work for making blog entries either. To be honest I do not anticipate spending my precious few days in New York in internet cafes, so please forgive me if my blog falls silent over the coming days.

As Arnie the Governator would say – I’ll be back.

The Galician small holders started to seek an alternative and possibly more lucrative crop – consequently many opted to plant Albariño, just at the moment that it started to gain in popularity. The rest, as they say, is history.

To finish on a slightly more positive note, top Bordeaux wines have always proved to be a very good investment, and as a tangeable asset they have been almost ‘recession proof’ over the last few decades. They regularly outperform the stock market, and as someone once reminded me, even if the market collapses, you can still have one hell of a party to drown your sorrows!

One of the other wine blogs that I follow is that of my friend Kirk at Sandihurst Wines in New Zealand (see my list of Links). A day or two ago they picked their first grapes of the new harvest; admittedly these were Pinot Noir and not a white varietal, but they were still grapes to be used for making wine.

Anyway, my point is that just as their vines are coming to the end of their cycle, ours are just starting to spring to life. I can assure you that the above photo was taken this morning – having compared it to photos from previous years, the new shoots all look pretty much the same. The really interesting part is comparing the date on which the photos were taken each year.

In this new digital age our cameras record all the metadata that we could possibly wish for, including (if you have the attachment), the exact GPS location of where the picture was taken. Hardly useful when you’re only standing outside the back of your own bodega, but I guess that if you were on a photoshoot in the Namib desert then it might be worth the extra investment. In fact, just about the only information that it doesn’t give is what the photographer had for breakfast!

So, studying the dates of photos taken in recent vintages it would appear that in 2010 we are just a little behind schedule – perhaps a week later than recent vintages, and almost two weeks later than in 2007. This could result in a harvest towards the end of September, but we will probably have a more accurate forecast once the flowering takes place.

I have to start by telling you that this photo was not taken in our vineyard. Indeed, I rather suspect that the young man in the shot is not Galician either! This picture does however represent, perhaps, a glimpse into the future of fruit gathering….

It shows a postgraduate student from Tokyo university wearing a motorised exoskeleton that has been developed to help ageing workers endure the strain of their labours. Apparently nearly two thirds of Japan’s farmers are aged 65 and over, so in order to help those aching joints the department of Agricultural Technology has created this special robotic suit designed to boost the wearers strength by more than 60%.

Using movement sensors, voice recognition and eight electric motors, the machine is designed to ease pressure on the joints and assist muscular activity when bending, crouching or lifting. After 15 years of development it is expected to go into production within the next 12 months, and further enhancements are also planned – augmented reality goggles may inform farmers about the ripeness of their crop, their heart rate and calorie consumption etc.

Industrial robots have long been common in Japan, and these robo-suits are already making inroads into hospitals and nursing homes where they can assist not only in moving and lifting patients, but also in aiding rehabilitation exercises.

Whilst we already use battery operated shears for pruning, at a cost of around $11,000 each, we have no plans to buy any skeletons in the near future – motorised or otherwise!

Well, Easter has come and gone, the clocks have been put forward, and winter has officially ended – on paper at least. From comments I have been making over the last few months you would be forgiven for thinking that we have had a seriously wet winter, but according to official figures rainfall has been only slightly above average. Temperatures too have been only one degree below the norm, but by far the most significant feature of this past winter has been instability – the most volatile and changeable for more than 10 years. In the last three months Galicia has witnessed two hurricanes, three small tornadoes, heavy snow and flooding.

Without getting over complicated and discussing Arctic oscillations etc., suffice to say that our usual winter airflows were sometimes replaced by much more unsettled and variable southern circulations, bringing with them rain, high winds and storm conditions. When air masses did arrive from the north, almost directly from the pole, the mercury plummeted, and parts of Galicia experienced record temperatures of -12C. So, yes, it would be fair to say that we had an unsettled winter.

Since the beginning of April we have seen a change to more favourable conditions – dry and sunny. The pruning and tying of vineyards is all but finished, just as the first shoots of the new season really start to push forward.

Whilst speaking of April, I should perhaps explain that my post on the first day of the month was indeed an April Fool’s joke…. we are NOT making a rosado wine, and never will (not that orders were exactly flooding in)!