Erm, not really a harvest story, but more one of my stupid anecdotes – perhaps I’m just getting tired and delirious.

I may have mentioned at some point that our cellar is built on three levels. Grape reception at the top, presses in the middle and tank room (and laboratory) at the bottom.

Somehow my planning must have gone wrong, but I think that during the harvest my own job entails rushing up and down the stairs probably more than anyone else in the building (which I suppose is quite natural when you want to keep an eye on everything).

Yesterday evening, in a moment of mental and physical exhaustion, I actually counted the steps between the top and bottom levels……

Now I don’t know if Angela’s father was an Alfred Hitchcock fan, or if it arrived completely by accident, but we quite literally have
The 39 Steps!

No, I’m not refering to crispy chicken fajitas or enchiladas, but to our largest vineyard which is affectionately known as ‘El Pazo’. It’s real title is the Pazo de Barrantes, but we usually do not refer to it as such because Marques de Caceres (the Rioja producer) actually owns a bodega in the Rias Baixas denomination which sells a wine by that name. Indeed, to cut a very long story short, the 5 hectare ‘El Pazo’ vineyard was orignally owned by them, but was sold to Angela’s father many years ago.

So, back to the story – the Pazo vineyard includes some of our oldest vines, many around 70/80 years old. Of course these are picked seperately, pressed seperately, vinified seperately and the resultant wine is reserved for our Family Estate and Barrica labels. Unfortunately, with each year that passes the yield of these ‘old vines’ decreases until eventually we have to pull them up and replace them with new cuttings taken from these old, original plants. On the positive side, this is a continuous cycle, so there are always more ‘old vines’ evolving (if that makes any sense).

Meanwhile down in the cellar, we have started to ‘rack’ the clean grape must after settling. The juice which is drawn off is perfectly clean and clear, and actually makes quite an attractive drink as it is. It has the typical intense, slightly floral fruit of albariño, but then of course, it also has quite a high acidity, some of which will be lost during fermentation, and later during cold stabilisation.

The picture below is not a dirty cathedral window, but is actually the sludge which is left at the bottom of the tank after settling (photo taken from above, looking down into the tank). Very pretty, but you wouldn’t want to drink it!

Back up in ‘grape central’ (reception), the fruit is still piling in, but somehow without too much fuss and excitement – all appears very calm and controlled. To put this into context, our sixth pressing on day four finished two hours earlier than our sixth pressing on day one – it would seem that all the first day cobwebs in our performance have been swept away, and we are now operating like a well oiled machine!

There is a fair bit of arithmetic that goes on at harvest time, not only on the winemaking side (where we calculate the sulphur etc. that we have to add to the tanks), but also on the logistics side, making sure that everything and everybody functions in the most efficient way possible.

Indeed, the reason that I picked on this as todays subject was simply because I was sitting at my desk looking at the pressing figures for yesterday. As I think I may have mentioned, months or even years ago, we have two presses, one slightly larger than the other. They both have a fixed ‘operating range’ – in other words, the minimum and maximum amount of grapes that we can load. This is actually a very serious consideration, as attempting to operate outside this range will probably result in extensive (and expensive) damage to our equipment.

So, as each new batch of grapes arrive in reception, not only do we have to examine the origin (seperating certain vineyard plots), but we also have to calculate the optimum loads, and allocate the grapes accordingly.

The real problem occurs when the last grapes arrive – we quite literally have to sit down with calculators and work out how best we can distribute the weights (not an easy task at the end of a long working day when you brain has already been working overtime).

Anyway, returning to my pressing figures for yesterday, I was actually quite surprised to see the volume that we had actually crushed – almost as much as our busiest day last year. The main difference was that yesterday we did not really notice it, which might be testament to the fact that we have now a well-drilled team who know exactly what they have to do.

Oh dear, I must have been tempting fate writing about the presses…. During the evening session the larger of our two presses just stopped working. Fortunately, we pay for 24 hours emergency cover during the harvest and within half an hour we had an engineer working on the problem. Luckily it turned out to be one small piece of circuit wire, a mere 3cm long, that needed replacing, and only one hour of precious pressing time was lost.

Harvest would not be harvest without at least one small hiccup, but having just said that I now have my fingers crossed that it will be the only one!

OK, so I like sunsets….. this was the view from our grape reception at the back of the Bodega yesterday evening, looking out towards the Atlantic Ocean (only a few km from us).

It’s really difficult not to comment about the weather, but suffice to say that on visting several different weather websites this morning, the forecast had changed yet again. The good news is that it’s sun, sun, sun all the way! I suppose that with hindsight this could, in some odd way, be considered bad news – if it wasn’t for the threat of rain looming on the horizon, then perhaps we could have waited a day or two longer to tease out that last bit of sugar from the grapes. Well, I don’t have a crystal ball, and weather forecasts can still be wrong (he said, trying to convince himself).

Our second day was quite unusual in that it was punctuated by foreign visitors. Normally we have a strict ‘closed door’ policy during the harvest and do not receive anyone, but as these customers had travelled a very long way to get here, and were making a whistlestop tour of Spain, we decided to make an exception. To be very honest it is really difficult to get your head into a guided tour when you have organised chaos unfolding around you. And so, following todays new experience, I think that we will probably retain our ‘no visit’ rule in the future, with the possible exception of minor royals and/or players of Liverpool FC (but not necessarily in that order).

Meanwhile, back at the harvest the throughput is accelerating as we receive more grapes than yesterday – quality still looking pretty good. The newly restored cooling system seems to be working well as we use it to chill the grape must for ‘settling’. Settling is quite simply when we allow all the unwanted debris (skins, stalks, pips etc. that escape the press) to sink to the bottom of the tank over a period of about 48 hours. This process works much better when the grape juice is very cold, and if Angela had her way, we might even freeze it….. just joking.

Apart from all that, nothing much else to report, so hasta mañana!

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?