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.

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).

Over the last few months our efforts have been focused almost exclusively on the vineyards, simply because the task of pruning needed to be complete before our vines spring back into life. Thankfully this job is now behind us, or at least until next year!

In the meantime our poor bodega has been largely abandoned, not only because of the pruning, but mostly owing to the pandemic. To be honest there hasn’t been a lot of activity (in the form of orders) over the last few months, and so now, we can finally turn our attention back to our ‘home’ – we have a lot to catch up on.

At the end of last week we hired a platform to carry out a few jobs that needed a bit of elevation – cleaning gutters, pruning a couple of big trees, changing some exterior floodlights, and so on. Fairly mundane stuff, but still jobs that needed doing.

Today we will do a bit of pressure washing on a few pathways, followed by some painting around our car parking areas…. all riveting stuff!

After more than a month of complete lockdown, life in Spain is a very long way from anything that resembles normality. Although we are, technically, allowed to continue working, there is really not too much happening in the bodega – with the exception of the vineyards, where work continues as normal. With the hotel and restaurant industry at a complete standstill, not only in Spain, but around the world, there is almost no turnover of stock. I guess the fortunate part is that, in the short term, our wine will not deteriorate and will still be available to sell once the markets recover. Perhaps the only significant consequence could be that, depending on how long our sales are curtailed, that we might need to adjust the volume of wine that we make in 2020. This is more to do with tank space than anything else.

In the wine cellar itself we are constantly reminded about how quickly the lockdown took effect. Shortly before it all started we had just embarked on a programme of upgrades to our equipment and infrastructure. For example, replacing all windows in the bodega was put on hold, as was work on an upgrade to our temperature control system. In the tank cooling system were are adding digital sensors and touch screen controls (with remote access), to give us greater control and the potential to monitor temperatures from home during fermentation. (I should quickly add that we do not work from home during the harvest, but we do occasionally go home to sleep!) Suffice to say that tools were quite literally ‘downed’ as we more or less abandoned the cellar, and we can only hope that work will be resumed, and completed in time for the next harvest!

In Spanish, if you want to encourage someone to ‘get a move on’, one of the expressions that is used is “ponte las pilas”, which translated means ‘put the batteries’. Today at Castro Martin, we were, quite literally, putting the batteries!

We have a small, electric pallet truck that we use for stacking our stock in the bodega. Technically, I think it is known as a pedestrian operated pallet truck, simply as it is not a model that you can actually sit on. Like all re-chargeable electric vehicles, it’s battery has a limited ‘shelf-life’ which, not unlike your mobile phone, will eventually stop holding a charge (or at least charge for such a short time that it becomes almost redundant). Our pallet truck has now reached that point.

The replacement battery was sent in advance, so that it would be ready, in situ, for the technician to simply come and install. Although, as often happens, things are never quite that simple…. Firstly, we had to use a second forklift just to hmanoeuvre the super-heavy battery in and out of our small machine. Then, having taken out the old one, we lowered the new one into position, only to discover that the manufacturer had sent the wrong size (and capacity) for the model we have!

At the end of all this time and effort, we eventually ended up exactly where we started – with a battery that doesn’t hold its charge.

There is a moment during the fermentation when the grape juice (or must) becomes wine – obviously when the degree of alcohol in the must passes a certain point. This week we have finally reached the end of our fermentation period, and so, without hesitation, we can say that we have wine. Our 2019 albariño “est arrivé”  (as they might say in Beaujolais)! Naturally, we are quite anxious to taste the new wine to see what the harvest has given us, but to be honest, this is probably the most difficult time of their entire evolution to try to pass any definitive judgement. The wine are still cloudy, extremely raw, and full of carbon dioxide (which at this point, is no bad thing, as it helps to preserve the wine and keep it fresh). It will be at least another few weeks before we have our tasting glasses poised, ready to draw any serious conclusions.

In the meantime, our renovation and repair work continues, but as the weather has now taken a turn for the worse (some periods of heavy, wintery rain), we have now moved indoors. In our stock storage cellar, we had a bit of a problem with the penetration of damp, and so, rather than just giving the area a quick lick of paint and hoping for the best, we decided to rip the cement rendering off completely and start again. In today’s photo you can see our guys hard at work doing the preparation work – we are just so lucky to have such flexible and versatile people!

Now that the wine making is all but finished (with fermentations nearing an end), we have a bit of a lull in proceedings before we are able to start pruning. Orders have been prepared and most have been sent out, meaning that we will probably replenish with some new bottlings next week, but in the meantime there is still plenty of work to be done. It is the time of year for maintenance and repairs, and a couple of days of very pleasant sunshine has provided us with the opportunity to work outside. The huge metal doors and shutters that we have on nearly all sides of the bodega require a new coat of paint. Even the limited amount of sun that we have here in Galicia eventually takes its toll on the special enamel paint that we use.

Meanwhile, inside the bodega, with some fermentations almost complete, a slightly clearer picture is starting to emerge of how the final wine might actually unfold. Certainly, the alcohol will be somewhere between 12.5% and 13.0% (maybe a touch less than our 2018’s). The other factor that differentiates the two vintages is that the acidity in 2019 is just a bit more prominent, meaning that the style of the finished wine might be slightly nearer to that of a typical albariño.

Allow me to repeat yet again. Please don’t misunderstand me, our 2018 is really a very good wine – certainly a bit riper and fuller in style than usual, but still a very good wine that will not disappoint in any way. If anything our 2019 might be even better, ripe, fruity, attractive but whilst also retaining it’s usual fresh acidity. Only time will tell whether I am right or I am wrong, but then that’s the great thing about wine…. every vintage leaves it’s own signature, and proves that wine is a unique product that has it’s very own character and style!

It’s not only wine making that we do here at Castro Martin, occasionally we have to catch up on a bit of maintenance as well. At times our guys are spread pretty thinly as we move from one chore to the next. One day they could be in the vineyard, the next could be bottling, or a bit of building work, or a bit pf painting – and so on. I think it would be fair to say that no two days are ever quite the same.

Over the last months, possibly year or so, cracks have appeared in one of our walls, that could, in some way, be attributed to the extreme temperatures that are ‘captured’ by the front of our building. I say captured simply because it’s a real sun trap. Facing directly south, with no shade at all, and with our white walls focusing the heat, the outside temperature can easily hit 40°C (104°F) on some summer days. And don’t even mention the temperature of our cars. The door handles and steering wheel can almost be too hot to touch! So this heat could certainly be one of the contributory factors in creating our cracks…

Yesterday we started on a few repairs, as this wall needed repainting anyway. Cutting channels (that looked a little like Frankenstein’s monster), and ‘stapling’ it to stop the cracks from spreading further….. simple! Once complete, we will paint with a special, weather resistant paint. Job complete, and on to the next.

We’ve been working on updating our ‘salon’ (meeting room, tasting area) for some time now. As two or three of our own team are already highly-skilled builders we made a decision to keep the work in-house. The only downside to this is that these same guys have to simultaneously continue with their normal chores, both in the vineyards and the bodega. This means, of course, that the work has not progressed as quickly as if we had used outside contractors. However, on the plus side, we know that they are doing a good job (quite unlike some of the shoddy workmanship that we have uncovered during these alterations)!

Take our tasting bar for example. It seems that we have dismantled it just in time – before it actually fell down of it’s own accord! The tiled surface on the front and sides was actually glued to very poor quality chipboard, that we now know was completely rotten and crumbling. Indeed, when we removed the tiles, they were already more or less falling off by themselves!

So, after more than 30 years of tastings and probably thousands of opened bottles, the old bar is no more, and we are currently working on several design options for it’s eventual replacement. Watch this space….