Well, our short summer closure is almost at an end, but at least the weather has been kind to us. Of course, I don’t mean for the purposes of topping up my tan, but much more from the point of view of our fruit now ripening on the vine. For the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of warm, even very hot sunshine, with temperatures mostly between 25° and 30°C (77° to 87°F), including an odd couple of days touching 34/35°C. A period of sustained warmth and sunshine was just what we needed, and we now live in the hope that this could continue through to the end of September.

The latter part of July and the month August are the peak periods for visitors to Galicia – in some resorts we even experience long traffic queues, often heading in the direction of our local beaches. After leaving London some years ago, I freely admit that traffic is something that I don’t miss at all.

Today’s photo shows a Portuguese circus packing up at the end of their short summer season on the coast. For us the end of summer merely signals that our harvest is now looming on the not-too-distant horizon!

I was reading a post on the Facebook page of our D.O. There is an interview with the ‘SpanEnglish’ actress Belinda Washington. To be honest I had never heard of her – possibly because despite being born in the UK, she now works as a television actress in Spain.

In the interview she was saying how much she loves Galicia and the food and wine – drinking her lovely, fresh albariño with scallops, lobster, fresh fish and…… hedgehog! I was shocked.

Of course, I then realised what had happened. The default language on my computer is English, and sometimes Google will automatically offer me a translation. Now, strictly speaking, in the context of what was written, the translation was correct, it did indeed say hedgehog, the subtle difference being that ‘erizo’ means hedgehog, whereas ‘erizo de mar’ is actually a sea urchin. Although the article really did say erizo, I would assume that they didn’t really mean hedgehog. (Or perhaps it’s a delicacy that I have missed and could be the prefect marriage for our albariño!)

Although Spain has many ‘Festivo’ days over the year, not all of them are National Holidays. Some are Provincial, some are Local, and some are even based around festivals, such as the Tinto wine festival in our own village of Barrantes. Many of the National holidays are religious, and today’s ‘holy day’ is no exception. In fact it is not the exception, but rather the Assumption of Mary (when the Virgin Mary ascended into heaven).

Religion aside, this day also signals the start of a short recess for the Castro Martin team, when we extend this single day  into a break of just over one week. It is our last chance to re-charge the batteries before the onslaught of harvest! Harvest time itself is very demanding, both physically and mentally, and so it’s really important to give our team time for some well deserved R&R before we effectively ‘kick-off’ the new season.

Our local weather has now improved a little and should be fine and sunny for the duration of our break. Of course, we have our fingers crossed (as always) that these conditions may extend until the end of September. Unlikely, but we live in hope!

There is still a lot of work to do in the bodega before harvest time, and so we really have to work out our priorities. Number one on the list (as always) is a pre-harvest deep clean – all the equipment, tanks, pipes, pumps, presses, floors etc… everything!

Having said that we still cannot overlook our long-term commitment to the environment and reducing our carbon footprint wherever possible. Consumption of energy in the bodega spikes at harvest time, when we have both presses and refrigeration equipment running flat out for long periods of the day (refrigeration 24/7 for probably 4 or 5 weeks). In an attempt to compensate, we have embarked on a programme of renewing all our internal lighting. By the time the harvest starts, I believe that 99% of the lighting in the entire bodega will be replaced by low consumption LED.

Large parts of the bodega are already complete, and apart from the energy saving, there is another minor bonus that we have noticed immediately. The light is instant – there is no delay, and the flickering that we have come to associate with the old florescent tubes is history. Suffice to say that the old system will not be missed!

The first weekend of August signals the start of the annual Albariño Festival in Cambados. There are pretty much two completely different ways to approach the weekend’s celebrations. For the majority it is simply a case of visiting the numerous stands set up in the town centre, each representing a specific wine cellar, where you can buy a chilled glass of albariño to drink at your leisure. There is a lunch session, which is quite quiet and civilised, and an evening session with can be really, really busy and very boisterous – this ‘evening’ session will usually extend long into the night. Personally, this is not the option that I take.

The second way to enjoy the festival is the ‘tunnel of wine’ – approximately 160 wines from more than 60 bodegas, set up as a huge tasting, and much more suited to wine professionals and also visitors that want to see a real cross section of the wines from our denomination. This is probably my favourite tasting of the year. Each wine is accompanied by it’s own technical sheet, so it is easy to focus, and taste in a quiet and calm environment. With 160 samples on offer, I taste everything, but over a two day period – even a hardened professional really couldn’t do it all in one hit!

It’s looking very much like this year’s harvest will probably fall around the third or forth week of September, although there is still enough time for this to change. Whenever it eventually arrives, then it goes without saying, the bodega has to be prepared.

Believe it or not there is quite a bit of maths involved in the preparation – working out how many kilos we might have, converting this into liquid (approximate yield), and then working out how many tanks we will need to accommodate this. The reality is that we have already been working towards this for some time, ensuring that we are systematically emptying the tanks nearest to the presses first, as we move through racking and filtering etc. (Very obviously, the less we have to move the wine the better!).

As we move into the final stages, then it’s all about bottling, simply emptying the last few tanks before we finally need them. This week we will bottle two tanks, and then possibly one more before September.

I think I mentioned a week or two ago that the launch or our new website and blog was imminent, and at that time it was. However, the last few stages of the process have been slightly more complicated than we thought, and getting pages and links to work exactly as we want is not that easy. Of course it is compounded slightly (well, actually a lot), by adding an online shop and the fact that everything has to be duplicated in two languages, making it all just that bit more complex. Recent legislation regarding cookies, privacy etc have also meant that these pages have to be reviewed by lawyers before they are finally added. It all takes time.

The good news is however, that we should go live at the beginning of next week (30th or 31st July). I should warn however, that as the site is being updated and final tests are run, we could be out of action for an hour or two. The changeover is however, planned for night time, so hopefully it will not inconvenience too many of our friends and customers.

My weekly ramblings (sorry, blog), will continue unabated, and now we are only left to watch your orders come flooding in!

We have only just started to sell our 2017 vintage, and once again it is officially classified as ‘Very Good’ – but is is typical?

Every few weeks we taste every tank in the cellar, and a few days ago we re-tasted the 2017’s. These are my observations:

The first thing to say is that the 2017’s are very good wines, full stop. The only question I ask myself is “are they typical of the albariños we normally see?” For example, I would never usually consider an albariño to be full-bodied, and whilst that is still true, this year’s wines are certainly quite a mouthful. Of course, we had already recognised at harvest that the potential alcohol was a shade higher, an average between 12.5% and 13% (normally between 12.0 and 12.5%), and that the grape must was concentrated and viscous. These factors alone would tend to suggest a very rich wine with more glycerol and therefore a greater mouthfeel that will linger on the palate.

Our 2017 wine is intense, some people might describe it as being ‘fruit driven’, which is true – notes of peach, apricot and other ripe fruits dominate. However, the most important factor is that these concentrated fruit flavours are still nicely balanced with the level of acidity that we would normally associate with albariño (the slight difference being that the acidity is slightly masked and not quite as prominent). Having said all this, the wines are still well-structured, and owing to the depth and concentration have a long, complex finish. I have no doubt that they will be well received by our customers whatever my personal ideas might be!

The other day Angela’s younger sister Duliana, who works in a dog refuge in Cambados, kindly sent us a photo of their latest summer window display. As you might be able to make out, it features our Casal Caiero label wine that we still supply to them (with all profits, of course, going to this charity). I should add that for the purposes of the window display, our bottles do not contain wine, but rather water, and they are clearly marked on the back of the bottle as such (so that they don’t get sold by accident – which actually happened once!).

Of course, we are not advocating for one second that dogs should be drinking albariño – after all, we already recognise that dogs very much prefer a good Beaune![:es]The other day Angela’s younger sister Duliana, who works in the dog refuge in Cambados, kindly sent us a photo of their latest summer window display. As you might be able to make out, it features our Casal Caiero label wine that we still supply to them (with all profits, of course, going to this charity). I should add that for the purposes of the window display, our bottles do not contain wine, but rather water, and they are clearly marked on the back of the bottle as such (so that they don’t get sold by accident – which actually happened once!).

Of course, we are not advocating for one second that dogs should be drinking albariño – after all, we already recognise that dogs very much prefer a good Beaune!

The other day my UK journalist friend Tim Atkin wrote an article about typicity. In the context of wine, this simply means the typical characteristics that you would expect to find in a particular type of wine – a combination of factors typical of the denomination, of the grape variety, all ultimately influenced by the local climate and/or vintage.

In Rias Baixas the definition of a typical albariño will certainly vary according to the sub-zone. Although there is only 60km seperating the north from the south of the denomination, climatic and soil variations can already produce some widely differing styles. These days, unfortunately, flavour profiles can also be manipulated by the use of cultured yeasts whereby a wine’s typicity can be can be rendered almost unrecognisable. At Castro Martin however, we always opt for a very ‘neutral’ yeast, doing our very best to preserve and protect the delicate aromas of the albariño grape. Our extended lees ageing period helps not only to enhance this, but also adds further to the complexity of the finished wine.

In our view an albariño should always have a delicate fruit, perhaps slightly floral nose, sometimes offering a hint of salinity. On the palate flavours are often piercing and intense – a lively sweet and sour mixture. Notes of freshly cut fruit dominate – citrus, green apple, pear  and can include more exotic fruits such as melon, apricot and white peach. On the finish is can have a ‘nervous’, granitic edge and a streak of a salt-lick zestiness. It sounds like a real mouthful – but this is exactly what the typical albariño should be.