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)

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.

Every tank of wine that we sell has to be tasted, and hopefully approved, by the official Rias Baixas tasting panel, before it can receive the official D.O. sticker allowing it to go on public sale. Before a tank can be bottled a number of samples are collected by the D.O. and taken to the Pontevedra office for tasting. The samples are also analysed and compared with our own analysis that we are obliged to send with the bottles. After everything is completed, we finally receive the stickers – known here as ‘tirillas’. This whole process can take a week or more.

Once a year these official tastings are suspended for a period of about six weeks. The reason?… Harvest time! (When the  members of the D.O. team are simply too busy to organise tastings). Of course, sales and shipments don’t stop during the harvest period, and so if a bodega experiences an unexpected surge in sales and hasn’t pre-prepared enough stock, then it’s just too bad, they simply have to wait for tastings to re-start!

In our own cellar the fermentations are almost at an end, and so we now have to re-focus our efforts into getting some wine out onto the streets! Thankfully, we do have a slight backlog of orders (even during a crisis), and so this week we have been busy restocking our warehouse in time for the holiday orders to be fulfilled.

The most important work in our cellar at the moment is monitoring and controlling fermentation. Of course, by control, I mean by the use of temperature. The fermentation can take place at more or less the required speed (within certain boundaries), decided not only by the wine maker and their preferred technique, but also by the type of yeast used to seed the tanks. (Some yeasts are far more vigorous than others and work within entirely different temperature ranges).

Generally speaking, fermentation carried out quickly, and at higher temperature, will produce a very fruity, easy drinking style, that will be ready consume shortly after the wine making process is complete. By using lower temperatures over a longer period, the wine might not have the same instant appeal and will usually require more time before it is consumed – but that’s really the point. It is up to the winemaker to decide their personal preference, and of course, will also be influenced by the target market and how long the wine might be required to last. The warmer, faster fermentation will normally sacrifice shelf-life, whilst the longer, cooler fermentation will slow down and extend the evolution of the finished wine, thereby ensuring better ageing potential. If extended lees contact is added to the wine making process, following on from the end of the fermentation, then this can change the physiology of the wine completely – extending ‘shelf life’ even further, whilst also adding more character and complexity.

During the fermentation we sometimes see strange patterns of foam forming on the surface of the tanks. Clearly this has something to do with the yeast, and the way that it behaves, but to be honest I have researched this and cannot find any specific explanation. I will keep looking.

In the meantime my photo shows one of our tanks (on the right) and the planet Saturn (on the left). I just thought that they looked quite similar!

A week or two ago I mentioned that our 2019 wines have finished fermenting, and so this week we have attempted our first serious tasting. It’s still very early days, but using our experience of past vintages we should be able to glean at least some idea of the overall quality of the vintage.

The first thing that I should say is that every tank is still a little saturated with CO2 (which is perfectly normal and no bad thing at this point). The wines are therefore just a bit gassy and also completely opaque. There are fine particles of yeast, bentonite etc., still ‘suspended’ in the liquid, and they will need more time to settle before the wine becomes completely limpid.

Our first sensory impressions are often those of residues of sulphur and/or yeast, but as with the opaque colour, these will dissipate over time. Our challenge at this moment is to try to ‘see through’ these minor diversions and explore the underlying wine.

The first characteristic of 2019 is the fresh, ripe, floral nose – perhaps not as full and ripe as 2018, but actually more in keeping with a typical albariño vintage. At this time there is also a noticeable saline ‘lick’ on the palate (a characteristic that I love), and more importantly the wines are well structured and balanced by a zesty, citric, green apple acidity. This green apple component is typical when the wines are very young, but this will evolve over time, more especially after our extended period of lees ageing. I always say that a good albariño can but a little ‘angular’ when it is youthful, but will always soften and that these harsh edges will round off with age.

In summary, the 2019 is actually much better than I thought it would be, in the sense that I thought it could be slightly a-typical and more like our 2018. This is not the case, and I have a feeling that we could be sitting on something very good – the only pity being that lower yields means that we have less wine that we would have liked.

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!

The minute that the last press is emptied, and the last drop of juice is safely delivered to our tanks, the cleaning can begin. And this is a pretty big job because, as I have mentioned many times before, grape juice is very, very sticky!

Every piece of equipment that has been used has to be dismantled, the most difficult of all being our presses. Floors, walls, hoses, tanks (obviously only those that are now empty!) – everything item has to be washed and scrubbed until it is spotless. Today’s photo shows our case washing machine, which whilst never comes into direct contact with the wine or must, is still stripped to its bare skeleton to be cleaned.

Meanwhile, in the cellar, the wine making continues, carefully monitoring the progress of the fermentation, perhaps adjusting the temperature of a tank by a degree or two, to control how quickly it is advancing – nurturing and encouraging each tank like a small child!

At the same time we cannot afford to forget that we also have customer orders to prepare – as I said to someone only today, our job at the moment is like a juggling act – trying to keep everything up-in-the-air and moving along.