I sometimes have a feeling that each year is getting shorter, as our harvest seems to come around more and more quickly. (Probably more down to old age)! Today we start our picking under a slightly grey sky, but thankfully completely dry and with good weather forecast for the coming days.

This year we have a strong team of experienced people (following the recruitment problems that we experienced faced in 2023). Virtually from the break of day our pickers got to work in our Castrelo vineyard. Consistently one of our best, and also a site that has achieved full maturity and is now ready to be harvested. By late morning the first grapes were already arriving ready to be loaded into our presses, and by early evening the first tanks had been filled with fresh grape must (juice).

Our first taste of the 2024 must revealed, as always, a very intense, piercing fruit. At this stage the juice appears to have good viscosity and also a refreshing kick of acidity on the finish. Indeed, pretty much all the typical characteristics that we expect of the albariño varietal.

The day itself was pretty uneventful, apart from perhaps one light shower at the end of the day which was a little unexpected. With a steady flow of fruit that was quickly processed, we have taken our first step along the road of converting grapes into fine wine.

No sooner had I posted my words about the hot weather in August, than there was a slight downturn. That’s not to say that it started pouring with rain, but more that the high temperatures dropped by a few degrees. The reality is that we were left with levels more reminiscent of a Galician summer. The average dropped to nearer the mid 20’s C (mid 70’s F) – there has been more cloud (albeit not total cloud cover), and there was even one day of rain, which thankfully, was more or less just that single day. In effect, this actually helps to clean the fruit, and remove any layer of dust that might exist from the dry spell. The other factor that we have noticed are the much cooler nights. In summary, the very hot, dry spell lasted only some 3 or 4 weeks and may not have done quite as much work as we had hoped, in terms of ripening the fruit. Certainly the fruit that has been exposed directly to the sun is ripe, whereas that in the shade is very much on the borderline of being fully ripe.

Samples have been taken, and analysis has been made, that shows us exactly as we had suspected, some fruit would benefit from a bot more sun. The problem with this is, because of the unusual growing season (mostly cool, changeable weather followed by this short burst of summer heat), the acidity levels in some of our fruit is unusually low. As a result we will start picking selected vineyard sites this Thursday 12th September, which is actually very close to the date that I projected some three months ago after flowering.

After spending six months resting on their lees the first wines of 2023 are now being prepared. However, as we still have good stocks of our (fantastic) 2022 Castro Martin Family Estate, the tanks which have been selected for this special wine will not be touched, perhaps for another few months at least.

Although we only make a mono-varietal albariño wine not every tank is identical, there are many variations, usually dependant upon the original source vineyard used to make each tank. For this reason, we always select a number of tanks according to their different attributes – flavours, textures, structure, balance etc.

I always equate this process to cooking, taking a number of ‘ingredients’ and trying to imagine how they might compliment each other when put together, but even more importantly, how they might evolve over time. There is a lot of trial and error involved, based almost entirely on the taste of each sample blend that we try. Once the final mix is decided, it is then down to the ‘simple’ task of moving thousands of litres of wine around the cellar, akin to one huge game of chess!

Of course, these wines need to be racked into clean tanks anyway (to separate the clean wine from their lees), and so by blending at this moment we can actually kill two birds with one stone (and thus minimise the number of times that each tank is moved). In some cases, these wines may never be moved again until they are actually bottled.

To be honest, blending is one of my favourite jobs of the year as there is always a great deal of satisfaction in tasting the ‘finished’ wines (after allowing some days for the individual component wines to marry together completely).

Meanwhile, in the vineyards, it is time to grub up and replant a few vines. These may have come to the end of their working life or perhaps simply started to die off, which sometimes happens. The weather over the last three weeks or so has been must better, with dry, sunny days many of which were tempered a little by cold easterly or northerly winds. Unfortunately, this is set to change in the coming days as yet more rain looms just over the horizon.

Since the very first time that I tasted the grape must of our 2022 vintage I must confess that I was very enthusiastic (or perhaps it would be fairer to say that, at that point, I thought it had great potential). We had enjoyed some pretty good vintages in both 2019 and 2020, although I have to say that I was never completely enamoured with our 2021’s (which was quite a difficult year).

A year or more down the road, after several months on its lees followed by a few months in bottle our 2022 is only just now starting to show its real identity. (I have said for a long time that it really takes a year from harvest, for our wines to realise their potential, and our 2022 Castro Martin certainly does not disappoint).

In Tim Atkin’s recent, and very comprehensive review of the 2022 vintage in Rias Baixas, he awarded our Castro Martin Family Estate 93 points and commented: “Unfiltered and lees-aged, this unwooded Albariño hails from Salnés Valley vineyards grown on a combination of granite, schist and sandy soils. Fuller flavoured and more textured than
the 2021 release, it has notes of oatmeal, pear, lime and kiwi fruit and the focus and salinity that come with the territory in this part of Rías Baixas.” He recommends drinking between now and 2027, clearly showing great faith in its ageing potential.

Apart from this positive review and the points, our Castro Martin also appeared on Tim’s ‘Podium’ of awards for different categories of the 2022 vintage. He rated this wine as ‘Value White Wine of the Year’ (bearing in mind that many of the wines above ours in the general ratings are premium cuvées, older vintages, limited editions and special elaborations, that attract a much, much higher price in the market. As a former wine buyer myself I am very proud of this accolade as  we always preach that quality/value is a very key point in the philosophy of our Bodega.

Of course, this score can be added to the 92 points that we also received for our Family Estate 2022 in the Guía Vino Gourmets 2024. I highly recommend that you buy a bottle (or two) to savour with your favourite marisco!

So, it seems like the end of the 2023 marathon has finally arrived. It has been a campaign fraught with difficulties, starting with the technical problems of our two very first presses, to our steadily depleting picking team (towards the end). To be brutally honest it has been long and exhausting and I’m sure that every single member of our team will be looking forward to getting home and putting their feet up – I can hear the sighs of relief from every side!

Of course, as I explain ever year, on the final day, we have to wait until every grape is inside the bodega and weighed before we can load the final presses. Obviously we don’t want to be left with an odd pallet of grapes that we can’t press. The minimum capacity of our smallest press is 3,000 kg and so every kilo has to be calculated and evenly distributed to make full loads.

Early assessment of the wine is good, supported by well balanced analyses from our lab. Good concentration of fruit, surprising viscous (despite the recent rains), albeit with an average alcohol a little lower than last year. We estimate somewhere between 12% and 12.5%.

Now that everything is done in the vineyards our undivided attention shifts to the cellar, seeding and monitoring fermentations for the next couple of weeks.

Well, we’re still here…. the harvest that keeps giving and giving, which is actually a euphemism for saying ‘never ending’. After so many days I feel like I am running out of things to say.

The weather is good, and our (smallish) team of pickers are working flat out to try to bring this year’s campaign to an end. As I have mentioned in one of my previous posts there is an acute shortage of experienced people this year. Luckily the core or our picking team are very loyal to us and work extremely hard. Unfortunately other bodegas have not been quite so lucky. We hear tales of groups abandoning the job mid-harvest as they discover that a neighbouring bodega is paying a euro or two more. These days it feels like the main consequence of these things is always financial – last year bodegas were obliged to pay a top price for their grapes, whereas this year it is for the pickers. Post Covid we have been hit with every possible type of increase. Grapes, pickers, transport and every single element of our packaging, all at a time when end consumers have much tighter budgets to work with.

I think I mentioned that many of our pickers also work in the sea, gathering seafood. The evidence of this is clear when you see their improvised lunch table. On an upturned grape case, they set up their small stoves and today, tuck into one of my very favourite types of shellfish – razor clams, or ‘navajas’ as they are known locally.

Despite the slow progress outside, our work inside the cellar continues as more tanks are seeded.

It looks like the bad weather is finally behind us, and so we should now simply be able to concentrate on final days of harvest and winemaking.

On the subject of winemaking, today is a very busy day down in our tank room. Racking several tanks and seeding three more, which for a bodega of our size means a lot of work. The racking process is comparatively simple, as I have explained many times in the past. The ‘seeding’ process (adding yeast to support the fermentation), is, by contrast, quite a long and drawn out procedure when done correctly.

The first phase of seeding is to rehydrate the yeast, very much as you would do in baking. Simply add water, at body temperature (about 37°C or 98°F), and leave for at least 10 minutes (left hand photo). Once the yeast is rehydrated we start to add grape must from the tank, bringing down the temperature in small increments. To goal is to reduce the yeast mixture to within about 5°C of the tank that we are seeding. For example, if the tank to be seeded is at 15°C, we need to reduce the yeast mixture to about 20°C before we can add it to the tank. The problem is that we cannot simply add the cool grape must to the yeast in one go, a huge and sudden change of temperature would simply kill the yeast. This is why we add the grape must slowly, bit by bit, stopping between additions to allow the yeast to recover. During this process, and once the first grape juice is added to the warm yeast mixture, it immediately reacts with the sugar and produces a thick foam (sometimes depending on the strain of yeast used). The two middle pictures show the foam, and the last picture is an artwork by Angela, adding the initials of our business!

To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether to call this Day 8 or Day 9 of our harvest. Yesterday, apart from some work in the cellar, our picking was halted for bad weather. Forecasts on Friday said that we should expect heavy rain for most of the day, whereas the reality was that it rained during the night, but by mid-morning it had stopped and then remained completely dry (and even quite sunny by the afternoon). Having said that, it was good to give our people a rest, as with a smaller team, they have all been working that bit harder.

On a bright sunny Sunday morning we re-launched our campaign, with the hope that in a couple of days we should be finished (hopefully sometime between now and Christmas!!).

Today we picked one or two of our smaller, more local vineyards (probably just over 1km from the bodega). Using a combination of tractors, vans and a small truck we actually managed to move everything into our grape reception quite quickly. With the presses working all afternoon the end result was that our bodega team did not need to work half of the night, and they were probably all at home, safely tucked up in bed by midnight!

Grapes harvesting vehicles come in all shapes and sizes

Today we are seeding our first tanks. After a day to chill the tanks and a couple more of  ‘cold settling’ they are then racked into clean tanks. At this point the temperature of the grape must is quite low, indeed, too low to start or sustain fermentation, and so consequently we need to wait until they recover sufficiently to begin. As the tanks are so large and the ambient temperature inside the bodega is also quite cold (obviously other tanks are still being refrigerated), raising the temperature of the tanks is also quite slow.

At this time, when harvesting and seeding are happening simultaneously the workload becomes quite intense. There is a lot going on, both physically and mentally. We are constantly up and down three flights of stairs – grapes arriving at the top level, the pressing room in the middle, and the tank room itself at ground level. Apart from the stairs, there is also temperature to take into account – working on the top two levels can be quite warm, whilst the tank room feels almost like a refrigerator by comparison. You always need to keep a jacket or body warmer handy!

Thankfully today was a little busier, and it finally feels like the end of the picking might be in sight. Having said that the forecast for tomorrow does not look good, with some heavy rain predicted. So much for making progress.

Thankfully another bright day to continue our campaign. Most of our more distant vineyards (no more than 10km) have been completed, and now we are working a little nearer to home. This being the case it makes transporting our fruit much more easily. Today we are not relying on any big trucks, but have reverted to our more ‘traditional’ method of a shuttle between the bodega and the vineyards using our tractors and vans. The downside of this is that we are moving individual cases by hand rather that using pallets and forklifts in the vineyard. In this way, it is a bit more labour intense, but then on the upside, with smaller, more regular grape deliveries it means that we can keep our presses ‘fed’ and working. (Using the truck method, we have periods of inactivity, until suddenly, we are faced with a delivery of 14 full pallets – about 10,000 kg).

Today we picked our ‘Bodega’ vineyard, just a small 1 hectare plot surrounding the wine cellar. Our tractors shuttle grapes straight into the grape reception, and so from picking to the presses can almost be measured in minutes, rather than hours! If only all of our vineyards we so close, it would make logistics a whole lot easier (and many a bit cheaper too).

Of course, the advantage of not having to wait very long for our fruit to arrive is that we can load the presses much earlier than some other days, especially when we are waiting for growers to deliver their crop at the end of their working day. Instead of finishing the presses in the early hours of the morning, our last press was completed shortly after midnight (albeit there is still quite a lot of cleaning to do after that).

Today’s photo shows the ‘bagazo’, or pomace as it is known in English. This is simply the remnants of the grape bunches after pressing (sent to the distillery to make ‘aguardiente’ (eau de vie or grappa in other countries).