I start this year’s harvest story with an apology…. to our local press. A month ago they proclaimed that our harvest would start on 20th September, and I mocked them openly for being so presumptous. How could they possibly know so far in advance, I joked.

Well, the egg is on my face now – we have started on Monday 21st September, as I now realise that our local journalists must have much better connections than I thought, perhaps even divine!

Anyway, the first grapes were collected under a milky blue sky – at 8am when I took the photo above, we had 13°C (55°F) with 67% humidity, and a little later at midday, 26°C and 38%.
Now I don’t wish to be a weather bore, but it’s really interesting when you compare several different weather websites for the same location (as is my current mission in life – sad, but true). For example, three sites say tomorrow will be sunny, one says complete cloud cover. Two or three say sun for the rest of the week, another says rain at the weekend. Should it be majority rule, or do I take a mean average, that is the question? Of course we watch the barometric pressure too, but being so close to the Ocean, that can, and often does, change rather quickly.

So, enough about that, what about the grape ‘must’? Well, as the first grapes entered the press, and the first ‘free run’ juice trickled out, the smell of fresh fruit in the press room was much more prevalent than last year, with a slight floral touch – this impression was confirmed in our tasting – delicate, floral Albariño fruit.

End of day one – early days, but so far, so good……

A bit of light relief before the serious business starts next week…..

Well, there’s nothing funny about cutting down a dead tree I hear you say, but let me tell you that this is not the first attempt.

I am not sure if this work was being carried out by contractors or by the local council, but the men who turned up last Saturday to do the job were certainly not adequately equipped. There were probably five or six men, two chainsaws and just one, very short pair of ladders (that proved to be their downfall). The ladder was barely long enough to reach even the lowest branch – they just about managed to cut it off, trim it into small pieces and load it onto their truck.

The second branch was simply too high for their woefully short ladder, and so they spent the next half-hour chatting, looking up at the tree, probably reluctantly deciding that it was impossible for them to continue any further. Very much a wasted morning!

Today the real workmen turned up – two large trucks and lots of chainsaws. Road closed, job done, as simple as that.

This is the tidiest and most peaceful that you will see our grape reception for the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow we will start to distribute the grey baskets that you see neatly stacked here, in anticipation of the picking which is now iminent.

This week is like the proverbial ‘lull before the storm’. We think we have everything in the bodega prepared, even the arrangements for an emergency generator have been made. Only a bit of last minute cleaning remains.

Meanwhile Angela is out and about, gathering grape samples, not only from our own vineyards, but also from those of our suppliers. These samples will be carefully analysed as we wait for the optimum moment to start picking. Each of our vineyards will then be sub-divided into plots, and we will gather grapes plot-by-plot in strict order of ripeness.

Almost exactly a year?…….That’s the answer, now what was the question?

Usually when I mention journalists, it is because they have written something flattering about one of our wines, but not on this occasion. For the very first time I am making a post because I feel moved to disagree with a comment about a particular wine….. and it is not one of ours!

A real Dutch (flower) auction

I may be having deja-vu, or perhaps I’m just getting old and repeating myself, but it’s that time of year when we start the annual scramble to buy grapes. The phrase I have used in the past to describe our negotiation is a ‘Dutch auction’, but I have since realised that this might be a slight mis-use of the expression.

Strictly speaking a Dutch auction is where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price, which is then gradually lowered until a prospective customer eventually accepts the price on offer. This is not quite how it works in Galicia, so perhaps a more accurate expression might be free-for-all!

Whilst we are fortunate enough to have many very loyal grape suppliers, who sell to us year-on-year without too much argument, we still have to ensure that our scale of payment is adjusted to reflect the open market price. To supplement this we also incentivize our growers by paying on a sliding scale – the higher the quality, the more we pay.

In some cases however, this is not enough, especially in difficult years when grapes might be in short supply. Many unscrupulous growers simply sit on the fence, do not commit to any one Bodega, and wait until they achieve the very best price. Whilst I do understand this, and many will say that this is good business practice, it simply does not provide for good continuity, and merely serves to artificially inflate the market. More significantly for us this can have a knock-on effect on our final bottle price, and in the long-term can potentially damage the market for Albariño as a whole. Unfortunately these few ‘renegade’ growers refuse to accept this logic and therefore persist in causing grape prices to fluctuate.

As viticulturalist, our own in-house negotiator is Angela, and I have to admit that I really do not envy her in this task.

Little by little we strive to improve everything that we do, not only in the wine making department, but also in the image of our bodega as a whole.

Last year, you may recall, we refurbished the front of the bodega, and replaced the logo on the building with some rather smart new lettering. In keeping with this philosophy we decided that it was now time to upgrade our image on the roadside, and so we have just installed some rather attractive new roadsigns adjacent to the main road.

In keeping with Spanish tradition we first had to submit our plans not only to the local mayor’s office, but in turn to the local government office in Pontevedra, for rubber stamping. I think that the entire process (without exaggerating), took nearly a year to complete….. say no more.