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.

I think that I must be clairvoyant! Back at the end of June I posted on this site that the weather here had been quite poor, but that in a few weeks we might be begging for cooler weather. Well, that prediction has pretty much become the reality! It was the 22nd July to be exact, that we experienced a quite dramatic change – the sun came out and the mercury immediately hit 30+°C (86+°F), indeed that week we probably exceeded 35°C. By the way, I remember the date so precisely because it was the day that my old friend Tim Atkin MW arrived in the region for a weeks visit (dining with us that same evening).

This hot weather has continued almost without respite since then, with the exception of one day, when we had a little light rain (but barely enough to penetrate the canopy of our vineyards). Of course, this is very much what we needed, as, until that moment, there had been a distinct lack of heat and sun. The effect of this prolonged, hot period has probably changed our original forecast of a mid-September harvest, accelerating the maturity meaning that we may now start in early September. Quality is difficult to predict at this point, but certainly the sun has helped.

Today’s video originates from a recent promotion in Ireland (our thanks to the Seafood Café in Dublin for their support).

I think that after publishing so many posts during the harvest I have been suffering from a bit of ‘writers block’. On several occasions since the harvest I have been sitting in front of my screen, trying to think of something to say. Of course, there are a number of things that I could have written about, the weather, the new wine and important Consello meetings to name just a few, but putting something into words has been difficult. So let’s have a try!

Since finishing the picking our weather has been changeable, if not typical for the time of year. The first few weeks after harvest were, somewhat ironically, dry and warm, but then around the middle of October the picture changed completely. It has been raining every day with just a couple of storms thrown in for good measure. There has hardly been any sunshine worthy of note. Perhaps we should just be thankful that we have not actually suffered from any flooding, as has occurred in many other places.

Inside the cellar, we have been tasting our 2023’s (on one occasion with a group of Irish visitors), and the consensus seems to be that the wines are really quite good, and certainly better than we originally anticipated. With all the complications caused by the poor weather this year our expectations were really quite modest, and so, if I am being honest, we have actually been pleasantly surprised by the result.

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!