After a few weeks of good weather the last week or so has been very unsettled…. again. The rain we have had has not been particularly heavy, but certainly enough to penetrate the canopy, thereby creating the conditions that we dread the most – humidity!

The well-known British journalist Tim Atkin MW was visiting our region last week (we shared a very nice dinner with him), and so he was able to witness first hand the weather conditions that I had described to him over our meal. It certainly has not been easy for us so far this year, and at this point we probably only have about one month left to run before harvest.

It is a little strange, considering the conditions, that the harvest will be so early (probably the first week of September), as the sunshine has not been particularly hot, rarely exceeding 25°C (77°F). Nights have also been quite cool.

As we move into the final month, preparations are now under way in the bodega too. As always, we have to ensure that all our equipment is clean, serviced and working properly. Of course, much of this equipment such as the presses (pictured) are only used once a year, and so we clearly can’t risk leaving it until the last moment to uncover any potential problems.

At Castro Martin you may have noticed the term ‘Sobre Lías’ on our labels, which translated means ‘on the lees’. The lees ageing of our wine forms an important part of our wine making process. The lees themselves are the exhausted or dead yeast cells that fall to the bottom of the tank once the alcoholic fermentation is finished. They are loaded with mannoproteins, which, when left in contact, can have a number of beneficial effects on our wines (assuming of course, that they are monitored regularly, mostly by tasting). Firstly, they release flavour and aroma compounds, as well as adding texture. They produce proteins that reduce tannins, which is helpful as tannin is not really required in white wines. Finally, the ‘reductive’ properties of the lees can also provide protection against oxidation, thus giving the final wine an extended shelf life.

So what is batonnage? This is really just a posh way of saying that we stir the lees from time to time, which helps them to stay suspended in the wine and increase the benefit of the lees contact. (It is a little like stirring your tea after you have added sugar – you don’t want the sugar to just sink and settle on the bottom of your cup). On the downside, lees left undisturbed can also start to produce some ‘off’ flavours and aromas, usually in the form of a stink of reduced sulphur (hydrogen sulphide). Batonnage can actually help to prevent these flavours and aromas from developing in the first place.

The decision of when, and how often to stir is a decision based on the evolution and development of the wine itself, combined with the experience and knowledge of the wine maker.

(Note: Photo is only to illustrate, we do not use barrels in our cellar)

At this time of year (apart from the pruning) perhaps one of the most important jobs in the bodega is quite simply to taste the tanks. As I have mentioned many times before our 2022 wines are resting quietly on their lees, but even so it is vitally important to monitor their progress – like keeping an eye on sleeping baby. (You assume that no harm will come to them, but you still need to make sure, if only for peace of mind).

Of course, things can go wrong, for example if the lees are not clean, they can impart off flavours to the new wine. Then we are also looking out for ‘reduction’. Reduction occurs mainly during fermentation when the yeasts are short of nitrogen, or become stressed. Having said that not all reduction is bad, there are also some important wine aroma compounds that form a part of the otherwise volatile sulphur compounds.

OK, so I don’t really want to get too technical, but suffice to say that these are some of the potential problems that we have to look out for.

On the plus side, I still think that our 2022 wines are really good, and have a great future – but there is one slight caveat to that statement. We will have to wait for them to show their full potential. Naturally, they still have another two or three months on the lees, before we will even start to disturb them, but certainly, in the case of the 2022 vintage, the longer we can wait the better.

After 2½ months of almost incessant rain, we finally have a break. The last few days have been cold with bright blue sky, and the forecast for the coming days is for more of the same. Although the rainfall has been persistent, we are probably quite lucky that we did not suffer too many extreme downpours that could have caused flooding. (In this respect, I am referring specifically to the Rias Baixas region, as other parts of Spain have not fared quite so well).

Today’s picture shows the Ria of Pontevedra (located about 10km south of our bodega), just as the cloud begins to break and bright sunlight bursts through…. a most welcome sight, especially for our heroic team still working hard on the pruning no matter what the conditions.

Inside the bodega itself there is not too much activity. There has been a very welcome trickle of export orders, especially as January can be a particularly lean month. The 2022 wines themselves are resting quietly on their lees, and our regular tastings still do not disappoint.

The weather this December has been a changeable to say the least – some weather typical, some not quite so typical. The typical part is that it has been quite a wet month. Indeed, as I write this post we are being lashed by strong winds and driving rain, it really is very wild and unpleasant outside. In contrast to this a lot of the month has been quite mild, whereby, apart from one cold snap at the beginning of the month (with only one night of frost that I can recall), temperatures have remained mostly in the mid-teens °C, ranging largely between 13° and 17°C (55° to 63°F). This is actually a bit of a relief, because the usual Galician combination of cold and humidity can be really bone-chilling.

There have been some dry days, and a few sunny days, but these have been few and far between, and so our seasonal work in the vineyards has been tough to say the least.

Our Christmas orders of wine are all wrapped and distributed, and so apart from a few odd cases here and there, the last week before the holidays is likely to be quite quiet. Time to catch up on some admin and other chores. Perhaps tomorrow, we might make one final tasting of our tanks of 2022 wine before the end of the year, just to see how they are progressing. I have high expectations!

I wrote a few months ago about removing a few trees in the corner of one of our vineyards. The area of land that has been cleared is actually designated as vineyard, and the problem is that if we don’t exploit this very soon then we will simply lose the permission, and consequently the size of useable area will be reduced in the vineyards register accordingly.

Now that the trees have been cut, the next step is to remove the roots, flatten the area, and prepare the soil. Not a simple job at all, but in the long-term we believe that it will be a worthwhile task (I was actually going to say a fruitful exercise, but decided that this might be too unoriginal!).

Once the ground is prepared the next step will be to plant the new vines and add the posts and wires on which we will eventually train the young plants. However, the development of the plants is slow, and it will be several years before we have any useable fruit. It really is a long-term investment.

Meanwhile, in the cellar all fermentations are complete, and it is now simply a question of time and patience, as the new wine rests quietly on its lees before we really get to know the full potential of our 2022 vintage.

With the harvest now well and truly behind us, activity in the bodega is still quite frenetic. At harvest time all other activity stops – no bottling, no labelling, our mission is focused purely on collecting and processing grapes. Consequently, as soon as the picking comes to an end and the winemaking is under way, we can then turn our attention to our other day-to-day work.

Today’s picture shows a corner of our warehouse that was completely emptied to create additional working space for the harvest. The top photo, taken shortly after harvest, shows the area after deep cleaning. The bottom picture shows the very same space as it is today, full of orders ready to be collected. As you can imagine, our bottling line has been working overtime (although that’s not unusual at this time of year).

With the fermentation of our 2022 wine coming to an end, we recently lined up samples of each tank side-by-side in order to taste our new crop. It’s actually quite a difficult exercise, even for an experienced taster, as naturally, the wines are still very raw. However, the really interesting fact is that, even at this early stage, the differences between the wines harvested from our different vineyard locations is already starting to emerge. The vinification techniques that we use are the same for every tank and so the apparent differences really do come from the provenance of the fruit. Without going into specific detail, it has to be said that we are pretty happy with the overall result. We are still optimistic that 2022 could be very good. Patience is now the key, in order to see if our babies evolve into the mature adults that we really wish them to be!

With tanks now well into their fermentations, all work is now fully focused inside the bodega. After every harvest our second highest priority, after winemaking, is deep cleaning. Every floor and surface has to be cleaned and scrubbed, to eliminate the stubborn, sticky grape juice, and every piece of equipment has to be stripped and completely serviced ready for next year. The sooner that this can be done the better, because once dry, the grape must can set hard like varnish!

The warehouse space shown in today’s photo is the very same that, some weeks ago, appeared in my posts full of pallets (or sometimes bottle stock). Today it is not. There are many areas that have to be emptied completely during harvest to allow free access, and also to ensure that stock does not get stained or damaged in any way. Suffice to say that space is always at a premium at this time of year.

In the meantime, samples of this year’s must have now been analysed by an official laboratory, rather than just our own small facility in the bodega. The results are slightly different to ours, but in a favourable way. According to this lab the acidity of this year’s wines should be at a normal level for our region (higher than we thought initially), and also the alcohol should be slightly lower, probably a bit nearer 12.5%. Of course, these results are still not definitive, until the wine is completely finished, but they do indicate that we should be producing a very typical, Salnés Valley, Atlantic albariño in 2022.

For our final day the sun was beating down (as it has been for the last couple of days, with a temperature of around 29°C / 84°F). With one final vineyard left to finish we hoped that this would be a short day. As I have mentioned in previous years we have to wait until the final grapes are collected before we can load the presses. The weight of fruit has to be distributed evenly as our presses cannot function if they are only half full. Again, this would mean another waiting game.

At about 5.30pm the last grapes were in, calculations were made, and presses were loaded. All was going well until about 8.30pm when there was a very loud bang and one of the presses stopped in the middle of its cycle. Clearly, from the sound alone, we could deduce that this was probably a mechanical failure rather than an electronic issue. We were not wrong.

The press had only just started it’s 75 minute cycle, and was stuck, leaving us unable to rotate the cylindrical tank of the press in any direction. This left us with a dilemma. If the press could not be repaired then how could we remove the partially crushed fruit and move it to the other press? We were considering all options, including taking our shoes and socks off and using ancient methods!

In short, after more than two hours, the engineers were able to make at least a temporary repair, this meant that at least the cycle could be completed and we could keep our feet dry (at least for this harvest)!

Apart from this final drama, the 2022 vintage has probably been slightly better than we anticipated, and after a very dry summer, our yields (litres/kilo) were more or less normal. Now we move on to the winemaking (albeit this is already well under way).

On Sunday, as we moved into the last few vineyards the sun was beating down on us, with the temperature hovering around 30°C (86°F). To be honest it was quite a slow day, with just a little racking in the morning, and then waiting for pallets of grapes to arrive in the afternoon. In the cellar there is a lot of waiting involved, but regrettably we don’t have too much choice. Our objective is simply to get all the grapes in so that we can do a final count, and know exactly how many kilos we will have in order that we can calculate the final number of tanks that we will need, and how best the must can be distributed between them. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds.

Lunch at harvest time is a very serious business. Our picking team usually stop for between an hour or an hour and a half for lunch, during which time (on very hot days) they try to find somewhere cool to eat – in the case of today’s photo, under a tree. As you can see they are also very resourceful, building a makeshift table out of harvest cases and a couple of plastic pallets. Unfortunately, the sommelier was just out of shot when I took the picture!