THE BUYER MAGAZINE – August 2023

5 Top albariño wines that should be on your radar…..

Bodegas Castro Martin, Family Estate 2020, Cambados, Val Do Salnés

One of the 30 founding wineries of the DO, this producer celebrated its first vintage in 1982. This was a time where it was widely accepted that wines from Rías Baixas needed to be drunk within 6 to 12 months. Bodegas Castro Martin went against tradition, ageing their wines on the lees for 6-8 months and not releasing them to the market until May the following year. Their mantra that Albariño does have ageing potential has finally been accepted by some producers across the region, and they remain one of the champions of this style. On the nose you’re still getting fresh apples, pears, peaches, lemons, but this time with a touch of smoke. Regardless of ageing, there is saltiness and this fabulous acidity and minerality from the soil. Apparently an utter joy with a plate of oysters.

I wrote just a few days ago about our changing weather, and how we had transitioned from damp, changeable conditions to dry, arid conditions, all within the space of a few weeks. As you will have no doubt seen on the news, these dry, scorched conditions have resulted in some very serious forest fires across almost the whole of Europe. Galicia has not escaped, and whilst the outbreaks have not been as catastrophic as the fires in the southwest of France, they have still been quite significant. Fortunately, many were brought under control quite quickly.

Apart from the fires, the lack of water in our vineyards is now starting to hit home, and although the developing fruit is very healthy, it could turn out to be yet another year of high alcohol, low yields, and (as I mentioned before) high prices. After an extremely dry and hot month in July, August has started slightly differently. Close to the Ocean there have been some very thick sea fogs (much thicker and more persistent than the usual sea mists that roll up our ‘Rias’ from time to time). Clearly, this not only reduces the amount of sun, but also reduces the temperature quite dramatically. It does not, however, provide us any much needed rain. Having said that, in the last two days it has been somewhat grey and overcast, and we have finally experienced just a few rain showers – unfortunately barely enough to penetrate the canopy, let alone add any significant moisture to the soil. Indeed, after such long dry periods, the first rainfall does not really penetrate and tends to simply run off the surface. An now, the latest forecast predicts that the dry, sunny weather will return…

Today’s photos show an outbreak of fire in the hills not far from the City of Pontevedra. The first taken at about 9.30 pm, the second and hour or two later, and the third the following morning when the fire has moved down the hillside, albeit that the air is still filled with smoke.

We wish all of our friends and customers in the United States a very Happy Thanksgiving – we will raise a glass of Castro Martin albariño to you (also great with turkey!).

Whilst we do not celebrate Thanksgiving here in Europe, we have at least, inherited one of your other customs…. Black Friday. For us no turkey, no sweet potatoes, no pumpkin pie, just a bit of serious retail therapy!

In my previous 2021 posts I have mentioned the quality of the wine itself, the low yield per kilo, and the crazy grape prices. As if these complications alone are not enough, they has been further compounded by the knock-on effect of the Covid crisis. Energy, transport and dry goods prices are all suffering badly as a result.

As the recovery from the pandemic got under way, then so the demand for energy increased rapidly. Gas reserves were already depleted by a cold winter, the generation of power from wind turbines was down (simply owing to a lack of wind), immediately followed a baking summer in many countries placing a huge demand on electricity grids for systems such as air conditioning. Almost the perfect storm.

Increased production costs caused by new energy tariffs, together with unprecedented demand on raw materials, such as paper (for packaging), had also led to sharp increases in tariffs for dry goods. Bottle production for example, depends heavily on gas supply, for their ovens – it’s a very frightening trend.

International supply chains are also under huge pressure. The infrastructure simply cannot meet demand caused by the hangover from Covid and the sudden upsurge in business. Ports are overloaded, ships are queuing, containers are out of position and there is a shortage of drivers and road transport to help clear the backlogs. The price of a container can now be as much as 300/400% more than last year!

The long and short of it all is that the cost of living for all of us will increase, and very unfortunately for us (and our region), our business and wines will simply get carried along by this tsunami.

The story of the 2021 vintage really starts with the 2019 and 2020 vintages. In my last post I mentioned the style of these wines, but the other significant factor was the volume produced – they were not big vintages at all.

A few months after the onset of Covid-19 albariño producers really started to feel the effects. Hotels and restaurants closed, and with it the on-trade business dried up completely. The only sector that appeared to benefit was the supermarket sector (small wine shops and liquor stores were also locked down). As consumers were not able to eat or drink outside their homes, so the supermarket business took off…. but regrettably, at a cost. Whilst trading with supermarkets proved lucrative, it was much more to do with volume than profit. Cellars were simply happy to see wine going out, not knowing how long the Covid crisis would last.

By May/June 2021 the on-trade tentatively started to re-open, but once it did start up, then what followed was something of a cascade. It appeared that restaurant customers were making up for lost time, and consequently orders were flying out of our door almost as quickly as we could prepare them! Having resisted the temptation to flirt with supermarkets, we still had stock, whilst those that had succumbed to the temptation suddenly had a crisis on their hands. By August 2021, many cellars (including many big players) were simply running out of wine – a month or two before the new vintage was even ready to be picked.

A mad scramble ensued. Cellars were desperate to buy tanks of wine at almost any price, and, as a result, the vintage 2021 problem started to emerge. In a small wine region that still relies heavily on buying grapes from producers, Pandora’s Box had well and truly been opened. 2021 was destined to become the year of grape ‘ransom’ (regardless of quality)!

After all the trials and tribulations of the last year or so (including the indignity of having cotton buds rammed up our nostrils), life is finally showing a few signs of the ‘new’ normality. Of course, the rollout of the vaccine programme here is Spain is hardly breaking any records, as Europe in general continues to suffer problems with the procurement of supply. In terms of population already vaccinated, Spain is still working on the 70-80 year-old age group, well behind the UK and USA for example.

With Spain lagging behind in vaccination, the knock-on effect is that until now, our restaurant sector has only seen limited, tentative re-openings. The better news is that the prospects for some of our export markets looks just a little more promising. In anticipation (and hope), of some increased business we have dusted down our bottling line and have already converted a few tanks of wine into bottle. All that is left now is to wait for the new orders to come piling in (he said, with fingers tightly crossed!).

新年快乐 / 新年快樂 (Xīnnián kuàilè) – Happy New Year! Today is the start of the Year of the Ox, and of course, we all hope that it will be an improvement on the Year of the Rat that preceded it. I guess that like all other celebrations at the moment, the 2021 party will be somewhat subdued.

In the meantime I am happy to report that after our first Covid victim, that the Castro Martin team is now back to full strength, and work continues on the pruning (albeit now just a little delayed). Of course, we are simply happy that this was a fairly mild case of the virus and there don’t appear to be any long term side-effects.

Out in the vineyards the weather has been quite miserable – grey, cold and with intermittent rain, some quite torrential. Not a great start to February.

Rest in Peace – Captain Sir Tom Moore

At Castro Martin we have only a small staff of full-time employees – a few in the offices (including ourselves) and a few in the vineyards. Apart from during the harvest, we can normally cope with just these few people to keep things ticking over.

At the end of last week our small team suffered its first confirmed case of Covid-19, apparently confined to our vineyards and with no clear channel of transmission to the bodega itself. (Our vineyard team works independently of the bodega during pruning). It since appears, however, that we might now have a second victim, albeit at this time we are not quite sure if this is Covid or simply a case of flu (symptoms, we think, point to the latter). Of course, symptoms do vary from person to person and so our second potential victim, also from our vineyard team, is being tested today. We have our fingers crossed for a negative result.

For such a small enterprise we think that we have been quite unlucky with the virus to date. The only upside is that those affected are apparently not too serious, and so we wish them both a speedy recovery. As a direct result work on this year’s pruning has all but stopped, and so, like everyone on the planet, we simply can’t wait to get this crisis behind us.