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!

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!

Last week I mentioned briefly that putting the tanks back together, welding the steel, is a much more difficult job than cutting them in two (not to mention very highly skilled).

The process of maneuvering the two halves into position and the spot welding is slow, precise and painstaking. As you can perhaps make out from today’s video every small weld is made centimeter by centimeter, re-aligning the metal between each fusion – it really is very exacting work. Once the circle is complete the result is a line of hundreds of individual spot welds that form the new joint. The welds are then hammered flat, with two men working simultaneously, perfectly co-ordinated, one inside the tank and the other outside – it’s really fascinating to watch.

After the hammering comes the final clean up. This is a two part process. Firstly comes the grinding, when the small humps and bumps of the join are removed, leaving a comparatively smooth, flat surface. Finally comes the polishing, when the tank is left with nothing more than a ‘brushed metal’ effect is visible (masking tape is used the give this brushed effect perfectly straight edges). Et voila! Job done!

Of course, now that the new jacket is in place it simply needs to be connected and tested. The odd fact is that this work is not carried out by the same people that made the tank modifications. Connecting to the cold water system will be carried out by either a plumber or refrigeration engineer in the coming days.

After a week away from the bodega our tanks (or should I say half-tanks?) have arrived home, complete with their new shirts. These bottom sections have had new cooling jackets added, to make them more efficient and improve temperature control, especially during fermentation. In English we call them ‘jackets’ whereas the Spanish call them ‘camisas’, which literally translated means shirts.

Obviously it is now down to the simple matter of welding them back together again, which is a highly specialised job, and a good deal more difficult than the process of cutting them. Having said that, the guys who do this work are so good, that once complete you can barely see the join. I will probably add a short video later in the week.

(By the way, the cardboard wrapped around the tanks in the photo are merely there to protect the jackets whilst in transit, this does not form a part of the tank insulation itself – we are just a bit more hi-tech than that! Also, the tanks are turned upside-down, so the strange fins that you see on top are actually the feet).

When you start cutting your tanks in half it’s never just for a bit of routine maintenance – it’s usually much more significant than that. Indeed, the last time we did this was following a catastrophe in 2008 when half of our tanks were accidentally crushed by a powerful vacuum (whilst testing the tank cooling jackets).

Today’s ‘vandalism’ has actually been triggered by choice, albeit once again related to the cooling jackets. This time we are adding more cooling to the tanks to give us greater control and more flexibility during harvest. Logistically it’s quite an undertaking, and to be honest there’s no really good time of year to carry out this work. Having just completed the racking, then obviously we were able to relocate the new wines away from the work area, but even so, tank space is always at a premium (because of our extended lees ageing).

The only option is to do this work, step by step, and when time allows. For example, today we will be cutting and removing just four tanks.

Obviously my short video shows the cutting process, but the one thing that a video cannot highlight is the smell! Cutting metal generates, well, a burning metal smell, and so we have to make sure that everything is completely locked down to isolate this as much as possible. We are actually using our powerful extraction system (used during harvest to remove the CO2), to keep the air as fresh as possible.

The fermentation of our 2017 wines finished at the beginning of October last year, and since that moment our wines have been resting quietly on their lees. Today, some 8 months later, we have just started the annual racking. Over the winter the lees settle to form a sort of thick paste at the bottom of the tank, and today we are simply drawing off the clean wine from above (making sure that the don’t disturb the lees in the process).

It’s actually quite a slow process, with long periods of inactivity as we wait for the precious liquids to be transferred. Once the clean wine is relocated we then transfer the lees into large airtight containers to be sold to the distillery for making aguardiente. Nothing is wasted!

The final job is to clean the interior of the empty tanks, which is a chore in itself. The walls of the tanks are nearly always thick with brown crystals that resemble rust (from the tartaric acidity in the wine), and they can be quite tough to remove. We have to use a caustic solution, but then making absolutely certain that the tank is rinsed thoroughly before it is ready to receive the next wine.

Following my latest post about the cost of producing a bottle of wine, I have just read a very interesting article written by an old friend of mine – UK wine journalist Tim Atkin MW. Although he is not actually commenting directly on the production costs of wine he is, in effect, talking about the price pressures often put on producers to reduce their selling price (and certainly their profit margin). If this downward pressure is allowed to continue then, inevitably, the only thing that can and will suffer, is the quality of the liquid in the bottle.

In the final line of his article he says “More than ever, we need a strong independent sector to preserve diversity, quality and individuality.” In this case he is referring to independence in the retail sector, but allow me to say that the very same phrase could easily be applied to the wine producers themselves.

He is a link to Tim’s full article.

[:en]In a small wine cellar like ours no two days are ever the same (thank God!). One day we might be blending or tasting wine, the next we can  be working on a marketing project – such as a new website for example. And that is exactly how it has been this week – preparing blends/samples for a VIP customer on Monday, and working on our new website the following day.

We use WordPress software for our website, and whilst I am reasonably competent in adding news and making the odd page update, setting it up and getting pages to interact correctly is just a bit beyond my capabilities (I am completely self-taught in all aspects of technology – mainly because it didn’t really exist when I was young). For this reason we have enlisted help…. from New Zealand! I don’t actually recall how this originally came about, but we have been working with Meta Digital in Christchurch for several years now.

Whilst the physical distance between Christchurch and Ribadumia is one thing, it is really the time difference that causes the biggest headache – their working day is diametrically opposed to ours. It’s almost like sending messages by Pony Express – fire off an e-mail one day, and then wait until the following day for a reply. It’s no ones fault, it’s just how it is – you either accept it or you don’t.

So the exciting news is that not only will there be a completely new website very soon, but we will also be incorporating an online shop, where our Spanish customers at least, will be able to buy our wines more easily. (We cannot ship overseas because it is prohibitively expensive, not to mention the special packaging that is required by the carriers).

At the risk of sounding too repetitive, please watch this space![:es]In a small wine cellar like ours no two days are ever the same (thank God!). One day we might be blending or tasting wine, the next we can  be working on a marketing project – such as a new website for example. And that is exactly how it has been this week – preparing blends/samples for a VIP customer on Monday, and working on our new website the following day.

We use WordPress software for our website, and whilst I am reasonably competent in adding news and making the odd page update, setting it up and getting pages to interact correctly is just a bit beyond my capabilities (I am completely self-taught in all aspects of technology – mainly because it didn’t really exist when I was young). For this reason we have enlisted help…. from New Zealand! I don’t actually recall how this originally came about, but we have been working with Meta Digital in Christchurch for several years now.

Whilst the physical distance between Christchurch and Ribadumia is one thing, it is really the time difference that causes the biggest headache – their working day is diametrically opposed to ours. It’s almost like sending messages by Pony Express – fire off an e-mail one day, and then wait until the following day for a reply. It’s no ones fault, it’s just how it is – you either accept it or you don’t.

So the exciting news is that not only will there be a completely new website very soon, but we will also be incorporating an online shop, where our Spanish customers at least, will be able to buy more our wines easily. (We cannot ship overseas because it is prohibitively expensive, not to mention the special packaging that is required by the carriers).

At the risk of sounding too repetitive, please watch this space![:]

Maybe it’s my imagination but there appears to be an increasing number of National and International days with every year that passes – some that I hear about, and others that I don’t. For example, did you know that yesterday was National Oreos Day – yes, Oreos the biscuit. So how many people did you wish ‘Happy Oreos Day’ or perhaps you simply ate a celebratory packet with friends (or by yourself!)

Clearly, some of the special days are just a bit tongue in cheek, whilst others are a good deal more serious. One of the most prominent such days is International Women’s Day when we celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

Here at Bodegas Castro Martin for example, we mostly celebrate the achievements of Angela Martin, our boss (my boss) and our winemaker. Back in 1993 when she assumed the day-to-day management of Castro Martin there were very few women in her position in Galicia. Indeed, she was one of the women pioneers of Rias Baixas, where today, nearly 25 years later, it is quite common to find women winemakers in many of the very top bodegas. Local recognition of her accomplishments came in the year 2000 when she was made a Dama do Albariño, in a ceremony held during our own National Albariño Day in Cambados.

Today, we have only a very small team working full time in our bodega, but even so, nearly half of our team is made up of women. On this day we celebrate them, their efforts and unerring support in helping to put Castro Martin well and truly on the world wine map. So let’s raise a glass of A2O to the ladies of BCM!