When we opened our shutters we discovered yet another fine, sunny morning, but with one significant development….. rain had suddenly appeared on the weather radar (albeit still a few days away). Our teams are already working at top speed, but we still have significant areas to cover, including one of our biggest vineyard sites that we refer to as ‘El Pazo’. Of course, weather forecasts for our immediate area are notoriously inaccurate, in that they can (and often do), change at a moments notice. Having said all that, we will, of course, do our level best to step it up a gear!

Today we are harvesting one of our smaller, local vineyards – Cunchidos. This is a small, one hectare vineyard located in our home village of Barrantes. The fruit from this location is usually slightly lower alcohol and a touch higher acidity than some others, due to a combination of the soils and the aspect (slightly more sheltered). This, however, provides us with a very useful element that we can use during the blending process. (After fermentation several tanks are blended to produce a wine that represents our ‘house’ style – excluding our Castro Martin ‘Family Estate’ which is not blended and comes from just two very specific vineyards).

In recent years, due to the effects of global warming, the average alcoholic degree of albariño from Rias Baixas has been slowly creeping up, and so vineyards such as Cunchidos can often help us to maintain a better balanced wine. On the other extreme, we have fruit which when ripe turns a deep gold colour, and other grapes that take on not only a golden hue, but actually something of a pink hue (see today’s photo).

By the end of the day Cunchidos was completed without any fuss or incident, and tomorrow we will move on to our ‘Caeiro’ vineyard that surrounds the bodega.

Some of our cellar team

Another sunny day here in paradise! Yes, the sun is shining and it looks like it will be a hot one – temperature pushing, or even maybe exceeding, 30°C (86°F). In these conditions we have to keep the whole team, both inside and outside the bodega, well watered. (They also enjoy an occasional ice cream break, all managed by Angela’s sister Elizabeth (or Beby to her friends)).

Indeed, everyone involved works extremely hard during the whole harvest period of normally about a week. Non-stop picking outside, whilst our cellar guys have to multi-task, unloading and palletising grapes, loading the presses, and then washing the empty cases – 2.000 cases in a small wash basin – not bad! (Actually I am lying about the wash basin, we do in fact have a machine for washing cases, albeit, fed by hand at one end, and then clean cases re-stacked at the other). I imagine that many larger (more industrial) cellars might well be more automated than Castro Martin, which is why we always explain to people that there is a lot of manual labour involved in the making of more traditional albariño. Made by hand…. with love!

Sunday, is always a complicated day for collecting grapes, some people are eager to gather fruit whilst they have more family members available (assuming that they are willing), and others would rather have a day with the family, quietly without working. My guess is that it largely depends on the weather forecast, people are more relaxed if they know that the weather is set fair, and are more motivated if it is not. Having said all that this particular Sunday ended up being a very routine day, the main difference being that we are now working both inside and outside the bodega. Hence a rest day only for the lucky few!

Yet another bright sunny day here in Galicia (although this is never a given at this time of year, and can sometimes change in the blink of an eye). Today our picking team moved on to some of our smaller, more local vineyards here in the village of Barrantes. This move was soon evident as our grapes started to arrive much quicker than over the two previous days working in Castrelo. (Castrelo vineyard is actually the furthest from the bodega that we own, albeit still only about 10km).

We have noticed that the quality of the grapes appears to be fairly consistent from all locations this year, and actually quite high quality. Earlier in the summer we were not overly optimistic for this year’s harvest, but the three or four weeks of hot sunshine that extended from the end of July more or less until the end of August appears to have changed the outcome somewhat. Also, with a forecast for fine weather over the coming days it is likely that the quality that we have now will remain largely unaffected.

An unexpected feature of this year’s crop is the potential alcohol originating from the high concentration of fruit sugar. It would appear (albeit it still early days) that we could have a finished wine somewhere in the region of about 13% alc. Having said that, this level has become much more the ‘norm’ over recent years, but as our fruit still retains a good level of acidity, we are now more confident that we should be able to produce quite a good wine in 2024.

Over the day the flow of grapes remained steady, all moved with some efficiency through the cellar, and so from a harvest point of view our third day was quite uneventful.

When we opened our shutters today we were greeted by blue sky and sunshine, but the temperature was tempered by a fresh breeze. To be honest a breeze such as this is, quite naturally, welcomed by our picking team who spend long hours under the sun in our vineyards.

Tomorrow we will probably start work on the actual wine making process inside the bodega, which means that we have to enjoy our last day of relative ‘freedom’ before our workload effectively doubles (working inside and outside the bodega simultaneously). This is the most concentrated work period of the harvest, when fruit is still being gathered, and the first tanks of grape must require our attention. The double workload may well continue into the middle of next week when the final grapes are collected. From then on, our attention switches fully to inside and creating the very best wine can with the fruit that nature has provided.

Meanwhile, today we were visited by a local TV station – Television Salnés. Having already visited some larger ‘industrial-sized’ bodegas they were quite fascinated by our more hands-on, traditional approach. We actually take that as quite a compliment, as we always preach the gospel of traditional (sustainable) wine making processes. They were not only captivated by the bodega itself but also our history, being one of the founding bodegas of the D.O. Rias Baixas and also a family owned and managed business (actually more rare than you might think).

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.