By way of a change, I thought that today I would ignore the work that continues in the bowels of the bodega, and instead celebrate a famous (and historic) victory.

For those of you who have no interest in football (soccer to some of you), you may not know, or even care, that my beloved Liverpool FC last night thrashed one of the world’s most famous teams in their Champions League encounter. There is a sort of irony that the Liverpool team not only have a Spanish manager, but actually fielded more Spanish players than Real Madrid in both the home and away matches of this tie (much to the chagrin of a certain Mr Blatter).

I make no apology to the anonymous person who complained about me featuring a non-wine subject in our blog the other day, but inflicting Real Madrid’s worst defeat in any European football competition certainly merits a mention in my book.

I just hope that Angela will forgive me for painting the result on the bodega wall!

For those of you who clicked on this entry anticipating a photo of Angela working in the laboratory without her white coat, well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. (Actually, by using the word ‘topless’ in our blog, it will be interesting to see how many extra hits we generate for our site!)

So, the truth is that our tanks are being well and truly carved up, as the whole top section of each tank (where the cooling jackets are located), is being removed. You may remember that it was the pressure inside the cooling system that caused the tanks to implode in the first place, and this is the area where the actual repair is required.

The temperature control process is effected by circulating a mixture of ice cold water and glycol around the cellar, through a series of narrow tubes that envelope each tank. As you can see from the left hand tank in the photo, this is the ribbed section at the top.

As the tanks caved in under intense pressure, the metal simply folded and many of the tubes (or jackets as we call them) were crushed or badly distorted. Of course any blockage to this system will prevent the iced water from circulating around the cellar and render the jackets useless – hence the urgent need for repair.

No, we’re not selling wine to China…..yet. This is an entirely different type of opening – a new door!

Owing to an important customer visit at the end of last week, we actually delayed the start of the mammoth repair job in our tank room until today. As I think I may have mentioned before, the first step was to cut a new door (or rather to double the size of an existing door) so that sections of the disected tanks could quite literally, be rolled out onto the truck.

The 9,000 litre tanks will then be taken one-by-one to a specialist tank making company in Vigo (about 30km from the cellar) to be repaired. Overall, about 50% of our total tank capacity has been affected, so this really is a major undertaking and will probably take a couple of months to complete.

Whilst the tanks are away, we will take advantage by having a couple of small modifications done, so that by the time they return, they might even be in better condition than when they left!

I am totally aware that our blog has dried up almost completely in the last month or two, firstly for the reason that I explained in my previous post, and secondly because of Photoshop!

I didn’t mention in my last entry that during our time away Angela and I managed to fire off more than 3,200 digital photos between us (even more than your average Japanese tourist takes on a good day).

So, at the moment, when I am not working, every spare moment is spent in front of the computer editing photographs, rather than writing blogs. Heaven only knows what we will do with them all when I have finished – perhaps we could wallpaper the entire interior of the wine cellar, and perhaps every wine cellar in the denomination for that matter!

Meanwhile back in the real world, the 2008 wine is still on it’s lees, and as we would have hoped, appears to be improving each time we taste – it won’t be too long now before we start the racking process.

The other interesting event in the pipeline will be the repair of all the tanks that you may recall were damaged just before the harvest. We finally have approval from the insurance company, and so work will start next week when we first have to cut a new door big enough to remove entire sections of the tanks. No doubt this work will provide an excellent photo opportunity, and the chance for me to once more practice my photoshop skills……. arghhhh!

Another day, another airport

I should start by explaining that Angela and I were married just over 7 years ago, six months before I actually packed my bags and moved over to Spain. Perhaps what I shouldn’t tell you is that we married in secret, for which my present mother-in-law has never forgiven me! (We both wanted a quiet wedding, as we had both experienced the ‘full-on’ white wedding with previous partners).

Well, the point is that, from the day that I arrived here, Angela and I have both been working flat out to try to put our Bodega on the map, with the consequence that, not only did we not have a honeymoon, but we have never really enjoyed more than an odd few days holiday in all that time – and nearly always tagged on to the end of a business trip.

Of course, when running your own business there is never really a good time to go away for any length of time, and in the wine making business there are times of the year when absence is simply not an option. Fortunately though, there is often a lull just after Christmas, when the new vintage is sitting quietly on its lees, and sales tend to slow a little, so this year we decided to take advantage.

Without being too specific, our journey included at least a couple of wine making countries, and there was always going to be a great temptation to start visiting cellars along the way. The danger being that our long-awaited holiday could rapidly turn into what the English call a ‘busmans’ holiday, trawling from cellar to cellar, trying hard to enthuse at the sight of yet another stainless steel tank!

In the end we opted out of the cellar visits, although I should make mention that our trip did include no less than 3 tastings with customers, two dinners with importers/customers, one press interview and one live radio interview – so not a complete escape from the world of wine…..

I would like to say that it’s great to be back, but we have pampered ourselves so much over the last few weeks, staying in beautiful hotels and eating great food, that I have to confess that I would be lying.

Hopefully I will find more time in the coming weeks to expand on our adventures once I have caught up a little.

To be honest we don’t get too many comments on our blog, but recently one reader, Ryan, asked the following question:

I want to hear more about how your winters are changing or not due to climate change. Is it colder/warmer, do you see any effect on the vines?

A very good question, and also quite appropriate to post as any entry in itself. Here is how I replied:

Well, actually, my view of ‘climate change’ is simply that the weather has become more unpredictable – there appear to be more extremes of weather, but not necessarily at the times of year they are expected, in other words ‘unseasonal’.

Certainly the last two winters have been quite different, two years ago with a shortage of rainfall, and last year with plenty of rain (albeit after the turn of the year), and there have been periods in early spring when temperatures have been higher than the norm. If you look back in our blog, using the ‘WEATHER’ label, you might find reference to these.

It is difficult to say what effect this is having on the vines themselves – certainly in the last two years yields have been smaller than average, but I tend to put this down to the record crop that we had in 2006. It is quite normal for the vines to take a couple of years to recover, simply as they are exhausted from yielding such a large amount. The cycle of smaller crops following a big one is however, quite normal in any wine region.

Over an entire year it might be fair to say that the mean average temperature is possibly a fraction higher, and that our summers are getting marginally warmer. Having said that the summer of 2008 was cool and wet, and at this moment we are experiencing a spell of very cold weather (the same as much of north west Europe) …. as I mentioned previously, weather patterns are just more difficult to predict!

This is of course just my local view – a climate expert will probably tell you differently, but then again the so called ‘experts’ are always contradicting one another!

Not very conclusive I’m afraid, but interesting nonetheless.

As you can see from the photo the bodega is a regular hive of activity at this time of year (not). Now that the Christmas rush is over it leaves little to do in the bodega, and so we turn our attention back to the vineyards and the back breaking job of pruning, which now takes precedence over all other work.

Inside the cellar the only activity is in the tanks, as the new vintage rests quietly on it’s lees, gathering nuances of flavour and depth of character from the spent yeast cells at the bottom of each tank. My impression is that our 2008 wine will really benefit from this process as the wine is still quite ‘green’ at this point in it’s life. Given this extra time the wine will mellow and lose some of it’s ‘angular’ structure – it will also gain greater depth as well as additional complexity. Only time will tell, as we taste each tank on a regular basis over the coming months.

So, whilst the wine relaxes in the cellar, outdoors our young team are working hard in the vineyards as they rush around brandishing their pruning shears. Fortunately, as I write this post, the weather for pruning is perfect, clear blue skies, with just a hint of frost in the air. Over the coming weeks the vineyards will be dotted with small plumes of smoke as the vine cuttings are systematically burned – a typical autumn scene in most wine producing areas. To be honest, weather wise, this is probably my favourite time of year, I guess that the cold, clear days remind me of England!

Let’s just hope that the sun continues to shine for a while at least. There is nothing more miserable than trying to prune with the rain falling directly in your face and water running up your sleeves (don’t forget that with our pergola system of vine training pruning is actually overhead, looking up at the heavens!)

Many of you who read our blog on a regular basis will perhaps already know of my frustrations regarding the sometimes seemingly casual approach to business here in Spain. No matter how much careful planning and forethought you put in, the sad fact is that it is quite normal for at least one of your suppliers to let you down. To illustrate the point I thought that I would quickly tell of my most recent experiences….

They say that the older you get, the quicker time passes – well, I must be getting very old! It seems like only a day or two ago that I started my Christmas preparations, when I sat down and wrote my Christmas cards, planned my Christmas gift list etc. And now it’s here – we are just two days away from the start of the festivities!