Despite living in Spain I still have access to UK television channels (thanks to an enormous satellite dish nailed to our roof!). Last night I was quite shocked to see the latest, and quite dramatic, anti-alcohol campaign launched by the UK’s National Health Service.

On many occassions, and on this very blog, I have mentioned that we support responsible drinking- everything in moderation, as they say. However, the claims made in this publicity are bordering on scandalous, and I believe, deliberately designed to engender fear.

Of course I have a vested interest in the drinks business, and perhaps I am not quite as objective as I might be, but I am also remembering that the claims made in this campaign come from a health department that projected there would be more than 60,000 deaths (in the UK alone), from the recent outbreak of swine flu. In reality swine flu officially resulted in 411 deaths, the vast majority of which were ast the result of complications from other, underlying illnesses. In addition to this, the UK government ordered 90 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine, but to date only 4.63 million have been used, (rumour has it that they are now using the surplus to treat broken bones!). It is no wonder that the World Health Organisation has accused European politicians of exaggeration and over-reaction, and is now reviewing response to the pandemic……. anyway, I digress.

The television advertising campaign claims that if a woman consumes just two glasses of white wine per day her blood pressure may increase, and this may significantly increase the likelihood of a stroke. In addition a female drinker could also develop mouth or throat cancer, liver damage and will perhaps suffer from depression.

Even trying to wear my ‘objective hat’ for a moment, this looks a little like deliberate scaremongering to me, and all this from just two glasses of wine a day? I am not quite sure which is worse, irresponsible drinking or irresponsible government propaganda……

Yes, there is no doubt that over indulgence in alcohol can, and does, cause health problems, but then again, so can eating too many doughnuts!

You may gather that I am more than a little angered by this seemingly exaggerated campaign.

(I thought little this ‘rant’ was worthy of my soap box logo that I have not used for a while)

It was our old-friend George W. Bush who once curiously declared, and I quote, “I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.”

Wrong George!….. Why not ask the poor fish that are having problems with the grape producers of Sonoma County, California?

Growers in this part of the world use a method called ‘ice encasement’ to protect their vines from late winter, or spring frosts. More specifically they are protecting the new buds and young shoots at the beginning of their growing cycle, as they will simply die when the weather dips much below freezing. For those who may not know, this is how the system works:

Well before the vines reach freezing temperature, water sprinklers or ‘misters’ are activated in the vineyard, coating the vegetation with a film of water. As the temperature drops below freezing, the water starts turning into ice, and given a little time, quite a thick coat builds up. This coating of ice actually keeps the vegetation at, or just below freezing, thereby preventing tissue damage in the young shoots.

So how does this affect the fish I hear you ask?

2008 and 2009 were both drought years in Sonoma, and as water was pumped from local streams and rivers to use as frost protection, so the water levels dropped. The unfortunate consequence of this was the death of hundreds of coho salmon and steelhead trout as the lack of water stranded the poor fish. Whilst the coho have a habitat that stretches from Alaska to central California, and still thrive in Alaska, their once plentiful stocks in California and Oregon are now under threat, and therefore new regulations are being proposed to restrict the amount of water that can be used. Quite naturally the growers of this cooler part of Northern California are not happy.

So here we witness a conflict between man and fish – the livelihood of the grape grower, against the survival of a species, and I have absolutely no doubt that in this case, the fish will win.

And no George, we didn’t misunderestimate you!

Every bottle that we sell carries a ‘green point’ (the logo shown in the centre of the picture above), which you may have noticed on many of the products that you buy. This Green Point is an indication that we have paid, effectively in advance, for the bottle to be collected and re-cycled (assuming of course that it is deposited in the correct re-cycling container). I am informed that around 99% of all glass in Spain carries this mark, so it’s nice to know that everyone is doing their part to help the environment.

Directly related to awareness in re-cycling is the recent push in the bottling market towards greater use of lightweight bottles. Personally I am in two minds about this….

The cheaper lightweight bottle is traditionally associated with less expensive wines, and therefore does not necessarily project the right image for your product. Now, I am not for one second supporting the use of the super-heavyweight receptacle (that nearly breaks your wrist when you pick it up from the table to pour a glass), but nor do I want something that will be blown over in a light breeze, or even worse, arrive broken at it’s destination. There has to be some compromise.

Our bottle supplier is now offering a ‘Prestige’ bottle with new Eco-friendly credentials, or so they claim. It uses less glass, uses less energy to produce (and boy, does glass production use a lot of energy), and because it weighs less, reduces the carbon footprint of moving it around the world! To be very honest I quite liked the sample that they showed me, it actually looked and felt very much the same as the bottle we use now, until I put in on a scale in our laboratory…. et voila…. 103g lighter.

Without the aid of a calculator I was easily able to work out that a 12 bottle case would be more than 1kg lighter, and our average pallet could weigh between 60-70 kg less than it does now.

I think that we will certainly have to give this a try, and at least see how this new ‘eco-bottle’ performs on our bottling line.

Bodegas Castro Martin is in a very fortunate situation, working almost exclusively with the HoReCa (Hotel, Restaurant, Catering) sector of the market, and not dealing with any major supermarket chain in any country. I say fortunate because all too often the practices of the high street ‘big boys’ can be considered just a little unscrupulous, sometimes leaving their suppliers more than a little unhappy.

For example, ‘multibuy’deals (3 for 2, 7 for 6 etc.) will always be funded by the supplier and never the supermarket. The unfortunate part of this arrangement is that these offers are not always negociated with the supplier beforehand, and can come as a very unwelcome surprise. Slightly more doubtful are the ‘listing fees’, when a producer will more or less pay to appear on the shelf, or perhaps even contribute a fixed amount to the opening of each new branch of the chain in question. Even more dubious demands include retrospective discount (outside the negociated contract) when a supermarket chain will simply enforce a lower price to improve their own profit margins.

The most unreasonable requirement however, has to be compensation for theft. When goods that are stolen from stores have to be reimbursed by the supplier…… I truly fail to see how this could be considered to be fair and equitable in any objective business environment.

Of course a supermarket supplier always has the option to walk away at any time, but in a harsh economic climate the opportunities to sell elsewhere can be few and far between, and some very large producers have little option but to comply, no matter how unreasonable the demand.

Perhaps the most unsettling part of this story is that many of the biggest operators annually announce profits running into the hundreds of millions, whilst in stark contrast the poor farmer or manufacturer can be left struggling simply to stay in business.

Today the UK government introduced a new code of practice to help protect farmers and food companies by enforcing supermarkets to keep written records of all negociations with suppliers. The new code will be regulated by an ombudsman who will be appointed to deal with complaints, and act as a go-between, thus protecting suppliers from potential ‘bully-boy’ tactics.

Computers, don’t you just love ’em?

Well, to be very honest I don’t think that I could function without one – just another technological marvel that we now take for granted. Luckily they still need a bit of human input, albeit I am sure that sooner or later, they will actually think for themselves (if this is not happening already).

The wine trade can sometimes be a rather drab place, with far too many people taking themselves far too seriously, so it’s really good to have the opportunity to laugh a little from time to time.

Ever since we planted our ‘Bodega’ vineyard several years ago we have been in discussion, or perhaps even dispute, with our neighbour regarding their adjoining forest of eucalyptus. Apparently, by law (not that this means very much), there has to be a gap between the party fence and the first line of trees – in this case there is not.

The consequence is that we have a very sheltered corner of the vineyard, where not only is there little sun, but also, owing to the proximity of the root system, our vines are well and truly starved of any water. Hence very few grapes in this area.

As I think I mentioned before, we have had a huge amount of rain this winter and as a result the soil is saturated and the shallow roots of the eucalyptus have been undermined. The outcome? We now have a horizontal tree in our vineyard, breaking posts and bringing down the wires with it. Fortunately there was no one pruning in this area at the time!

Our neighbour has been very apologetic, and has now promised to repair the damaged fence and pergolas, and also to cut back the tree line. I will not hold my breath……

I mentioned the other day that we were desperate to bottle some wine as quickly as possible, simply as we had no floor stock left to sell. The bottles that we were waiting for finally arrived, and so yesterday morning our guys got to work on the bottling line. (Unfortunately I was absent owing to an emergency dental appointment for a broken tooth – certainly not a planned absence!)

This picture shows a nice, cool corner of our warehouse that is normally stacked high with pallets of wine ready for sale, usually between 20 and 30. Today there is but one lonely pallet (hang on a minute, isn’t that the name of a famous travel guide?)

Of course this is actually good news, as it means that we pretty much sold all the stock that we had prepared for the Christmas period, but on the downside, there is also a bit of bad news…..

Naturally we had planned to bottle more stock immediately upon our return from the holidays, but the full container of bottles that should have arrived during the first week of January did not make it – for a rather unusual reason. Believe it or not, it did not even start it’s journey from Barcelona owing to widespread snow! Not snow in Barcelona, or even here on the coast of Galicia, but inland, across the centre of Spain. The same snow that brought Madrid to a grinding halt yesterday, causing chaos in yet another European airport. I hear that even the Germans, who are always frighteningly well organised, and well prepared, have been struggling with the recent inclement weather.

We have our fingers crossed that our precious cargo of bottles might arrive later today, or perhaps tomorrow, so that we can quickly bottle one or two tanks.