In all honesty, we will probably never be able to produce biological, biodynamic or completely ‘natural’ wines here at Castro Martin. Having said that, we do, and always have, used minimal intervention in our entire fruit growing and wine making processes, for as many years as I have been here (and probably long before that). As always, there are two main factors that stop us from overcoming the final obstacles in achieving official certification. Our weather, and at least a few of the controls imposed by our denomination.

For example, no commercially minded person is going to sit back and watch their fruit rot on the vines if there is something that they can do to prevent it – simply for the sake of preserving their biological or biodynamic status. On the one hand, and in certain vintages, it could be a viable option, but year-on-year it would probably be difficult to sustain. (By coincidence I have just introduced a key word – sustainable, and that is exactly how we are classified). We are sustainable producers, in other words we practice ‘mindful winemaking’ – always. always, always with one eye fixed firmly on the environment, and what we can do (within reason), to preserve it.

Of course, I also mentioned the controls of our denomination. By this I mean that if we were to produce a wine completely without filtration (to retain more texture), then if the wine should any single trace of cloudiness or was not crystal clear, then it simply would pass the control tasting and could not be sold as a Rias Baixas wine. This is just one example of the many controls that guide our wine making process.

Apart from only using a very light filtration, one of the steps that we could (and might) take to enhance our wine is to eliminate cold-stabilisation completely. We do this stabilisation to eliminate tartrate, that can, potentially, be precipitated by the tartaric acid in the wine to form (unsightly) tartrate crystals in the bottle. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand that this is actually the very same substance as the cream of tatar that we use in cooking – completely natural and completely harmless. Many consumers simply do not recognise this and could possibly return the bottle as being faulty. Just one of the downsides of minimal intervention.

In the end, it is just not as straightforward as some might think – we can only strive to do our best, whilst respecting the controls and the climate that we have to live with!

Of course, I should have pointed out from the offset, that there is no official recognition or certification for the category of ‘natural wine’ – but clearly, as the name implies, they are simply made in the most natural way possible, with nothing added and as little as possible taken away. As I have mentioned before, the downside can be that the wines themselves are inherently unstable. For example, a natural wine might have no sulphur added (leaving them prone to oxidation), they might not be fined to remove proteins (leading to protein instability and cloudiness in the wine). They are also largely unfiltered – a process that cleans the wine, but also removes body and flavour (according to the type and level of filtration used). In the case of natural white wines, they will certainly not be cold-stabilised (and can therefore develop tartrate crystals in the bottle). If the consumer is happy with this, and accepts a multitude of potential flaws, then why not?

To be honest, all wines are ‘natural’ – certainly they will be manipulated by technology or perhaps ‘chemically’ at some point, but never to the extent where flavourings or colourants would be added. For example, some commercial wines (in some wine growing areas) might allow the addition of grape concentrate to sweeten, or tartaric acid to correct the balance, but even these additions are strictly controlled and limited. (I should add that in the case of albariño, we never need to add acidity – the balance in our wine is simply achieved by chosing the optimum moment to harvest).

Perhaps the only way in which the ‘flavour profile’ of a wine can be manipulated is by the choice of yeast added. For example, in some extreme cases, exotic fruit flavours can be infused into a wine by the use of certain yeasts (which can either mask the natural fruit completely or distort it, almost beyond recognition). At Castro Martin, whilst we are obliged to seed our wines with yeast, we always select a very neutral strain that allows the albariño fruit to shine through. OK, we add yeast, but the flavour of our wine is still natural.

Over my last few posts I have broadly outlined many of the steps that we already take to keep our wine as natural as possible, and in my next post I will talk about possible future developments that we are considering.

A couple of weeks ago we attended a very interesting seminar – ‘Making wines with low SO2 (sulphur dioxide) content’.

One of the most defining characteristics of a ‘natural’ wine is that it will certainly be low in sulphur – sometimes with no added SO2 whatsoever. Added sulphur has two roles to play in a finished wine: Firstly, it acts as a microbicide, killing bacteria or any remaining yeasts that could eventually lead to spoilage. Secondly, it prevents oxidation of the wine, by preventing or reducing interaction of wine with oxygen.

During fermentation yeast will naturally produce a very small amount of SO2 (and so it will always be present), the question is – is this enough to protect a wine in the medium to long-term? For example, it’s worth noting that premature oxidation is actually a very common fault in ‘natural’ wines.

Our seminar talked of this, and offered alternative solutions, products to be used in the grape must to replace SO2, yeast strains that produce very little natural SO2, and pre-bottling additives – all apparently quite natural. We tasted two Spanish white wines from the 2018 vintage made using the low-sulphur products….

When I was a wine buyer, one of the most important issues for me was not only the quality, but mainly the longevity of the wine – looking into its future and trying to imagine how it might evolve. (Bearing in mind that many of my purchasing decisions were made in the producers cellar, tasting raw wine from tanks and barrels). If a wine tasted ready for drinking from the first sip, then the likely hood was that it would not last the course. It is rare that a good or great wine will show it’s true colours during its infancy – and that is where the buyers judgement comes into play.

I say this because of the two 2018 wines in the tasting. They were fine for drinking NOW, very commercial styles, but simply ready to give a bit of ‘instant gratification’. Perhaps perfect for the two wines in question, but not really for our albariño, which can often be consumed two or three years down the road. I’m sorry to say, that we will almost certainly continue with our current policy of adding a little pre-bottling SO2, simply because it works for us, and our export customers (who require an extended shelf-life).

In my last post I raised the question – what steps can we take to make our wine more natural? Of course, the answer to this question is, as always, divided into two parts – grape production and wine making.

We start by examining every process in detail by considering the best and most effective, natural products and operations that we can use, thereby manipulating the must and wine as little as possible. This might seem quite straightforward, but then, unfortunately, some of these processes can have drawbacks and can create potential problems, both to the finished wine and also its evolution in bottle.

Over the years I have written extensively about our vineyard practices, using as many traditional and organic products as possible. Not only are these better for the plants and soils, but the vines will also react naturally, not building any product resistance, as they might do in the case of some more modern systemic treatments. It’s very similar to humans. For example, the difference between using homeopathic medicines as opposed to antibiotics. The former is very natural, and whilst the latter might be more convenient, it can cause long-term problems, forming immunity and rendering treatment useless.

Inside the cellar we already know that white wines are especially prone to oxidation during every stage of their lifetime – from the moment fruit is picked to the moment that it sits in a glass waiting to be consumed. Preservation and longevity are therefore our biggest considerations in everything that we do. What can we do to capture, and ultimately preserve the freshness of the albariño grape variety, whilst at the same time keeping it as ‘natural’ as possible. It ain’t easy, that’s for sure!

In a number of countries the latest trends in what we drink can be determined by fashion – what style or varietal is hot, and what are the journalists and influencers writing about? For example, in recent years we have witnessed the success of Prosecco, and the resurgence of rosé wines, and also the steady, unerring growth of natural, organic or biodynamic wines.

As wine producers we obviously have to be aware of these developments, and do what we can to react to the market. Of course, there is always a limit to how much we are able to react as there are always controls, rules and laws that we have to respect. In our case, for example, we can’t make rosé wine from a white grape, but it we look closely perhaps there are some small adjustments that we can make to produce wines that are as ‘natural’ as possible.

In the vineyards we already do almost as much as we can, or as much as nature and our climate will allow, but to be brutally honest it’s highly unlikely that we would ever be able to do enough to achieve fully certified organic or biodynamic status. Indeed, there are exactly ZERO wine cellars in our denomination that are certified as such. It’s really dictated by the vagaries of our wet, cool, humid climate – great for making a fresh, zesty, cool climate albariño, but not much help at all for making biological or biodynamic wine.

So what can we do?…. It’s really all about intervention – the less intervention that we make, the more natural the process. In order to achieve this we can simply examine every step that we take both inside and outside the bodega, and then decide what techniques we can adjust, or possibly eliminate completely. It’s a delicate balance between art and science!

In my next installment I will explain in more detail what we already do, and some of the options and innovations that are open to us.

There is no doubt that we need to take care of our planet, in every possible way. These days it’s all about carbon footprint, minimal intervention, and natural products, and this is not unique to the wine industry.

If you think for a moment about the evolution of wine making, then it must be true to say that once-upon-a-time all wines were ‘natural’ (when wine was first produced). Then, over the decades and centuries, as technology has evolved, we have started to make cleaner, more technical wines – the inherent problem being that at least some of the body and character has almost certainly been processed and filtered out.

Of course tradition is important, and this is often protected through the rules and regulations of the controlling bodies – the D.O.’s and A.O.C.’s of this world. On the other hand, I believe that technology still has it’s part to play, but the question is, how much technology? The quality and style of the end product will ultimately be directly determined by the amount of intervention and manipulation that takes place (both in the vineyard and in the wine cellar).

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy wines that are allowed to fully express themselves and that are a true and honest representation of their roots and origins, but at the same time I don’t want to be offered a completely opaque wine that leaves a residue of soil at the bottom of my glass! Believe it or not I have atually been presented with such a glass (OK, maybe without the soil), but to be brutally honest, I didn’t really like it one bit. As a former wine buyer I was trained to be open-minded about new and exciting wines, but then there always has to be a limit.

Our current official classifications (that can be certified), are biological, biodynamic and natural. However, wines can also be sustainable, with the least possible amount of intervention – using what I prefer to call ‘mindful winemaking’. And that is just what we do.

First of all I have to wish a very Merry Christmas to anyone who might just be bored enough to read this post on Christmas Day!

As is the tradition in Spain (and in many parts of Europe), the Christmas meal is eaten very late in the evening of 24th December. In our own multi-cultural household we compromise, by having dinner on 24th, but perhaps just a little more to an English timetable, starting at around 8pm. This year we opted for a turkey dinner, but as always, with the typical Spanish seafood starter (often a meal in itself, the main course often being less important).

Wine, of course, plays an important part in our household. In 2018 our aperitif was the limited release of Tio Pepe Fino ‘en rama’ (we drink a lot of fino and manzanilla throughout the year). With the seafood we had an astonishing 2013 Castro Martin Family Estate. This was made more astonishing when we consider that 2013 was not really a great vintage. Prolonged rainfall in the period before picking meant big adjustments to the pressing and winemaking – pressing for example, was limited to minutes, making this vintage almost a ‘first press’ wine. However, there was no hint whatsoever of dilution in this bottle – simply delicious.

The star of the show, as always, was reserved for the main course – a 1992 Corton Charlemagne from Domaine Michel Juillot. The older bottles in my cellar are usually made by people that I know, and have visited regularly over the years – Juillot, however, is not one of them!

The wine itself was bright gold in colour, but not a deep gold. A very full, ripe nose, still showing fruit, but with notes of caramel (to be expected in a 26 years old wine). Full in the mouth, with no hint of oxidation, I was really amazed that this wine was still full of ripe, honeyed apricot fruit, but balanced by a steely elegance, finesse and just a touch of lemon acidity. Of course, this type of wine only serves to prove that pedigree, and a skilled winemaker, can, and will, always make wine that is capable of lasting the course (assuming correct storage).

Now when I say it’s ‘turkey season’, I don’t mean literally go out and hunt a turkey (except perhaps at your local butcher’s shop). Of course, eating turkey in this autumn/winter season is traditional, for different people in different countries. In the States it forms the centrepiece of nearly every Thanksgiving meal, whilst in the UK it usually appears on the Christmas lunch table. Over in Japan they prefer to stick to their traditional KFC Christmas meal – in a Christmas Party Barrel (a brilliant piece of marketing originating back in the 70’s)! I believe that it was a deliberate marketing ploy to blur the distinction between turkey and chicken as part of a traditional ‘westernised’ Christmas.

No doubt you can already guess what my next line is going to be…. my wine recommendation to drink with your turkey. There are, indeed, many widely differing options to chose from, but certainly albariño should appear somewhere on the list. More especially a Castro Martin albariño!

Whilst turkey is not necessarily a Christmas tradition here in Spain, fresh seafood as a first course certainly is. Tables will often be heaving under the weight of a huge platter of every imaginable type of seafood – crabs, prawns, shrimps, lobster, clams, oysters, scallops, mussels – you name it…. Of course in this case, then there really is no other choice. It simply has to be (Castro Martin) albariño!

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!)

Just after I wrote this post, and purely by co-incidence, this article appeared in our local press. Obviously my views differ slightly from that of the author (click on article to enlarge).

A question that I often ask myself, and that is apparently a frequently asked question is – when a restaurant is awarded a Michelin star, does the star belong to the chef or the restaurant? The answer is not quite as clear cut as you might think. Certainly is is the chef who takes the accolades for his menu, but in reality Michelin stars are awarded for the total experience including service, wine list, amenities, general ambiance etc.

Once awarded a star or two does this then mean that the chef has to spend all his waking hours cooking and supervising his kitchen? Well, no, not at all (much to my own chagrin). A chef can apparently train a head chef to prepare his menu and then, if he wishes, move on to set up another enterprise, which explains how a chef can run several different establishments at the same time, clocking up Michelin stars around the country. Indeed there are some celebrity chefs that have been awarded a multitude of stars in a number of different locations (sometimes on different continents!).

Of course, if said chef sells up, moves or forms a different company, then the star rating does not automatically follow him or her, it stays with the restaurant. In these circumstances the restaurant would normally be re-reviewed pretty quickly.

I suppose these ‘roaming’ chefs are a little like flying winemakers, they make their mark and then ‘hover’ around different locations, juggling to keep all the pieces in place.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to see a talented chef where he should be, in his kitchen, showing off his cooking skills to the paying public.