The last few days before harvest is always a bit nerve-racking. Anticipating the work to come, whilst also constantly checking that everything is in place and no detail has been overlooked…. even down to the purchase of paper rolls.

The grape reception, which is only used once a year, has been cleaned, and nearly half of our mountain of harvest cases have already been distributed.

We are analysing fruit on a daily basis, and watching it edge closer and closer to the best possible balance (between sugar, acidity and pH). Only then will we begin the 2019 harvest.

Of course, whilst monitoring the fruit, we are also keeping a close eye on the weather. At the moment the weather is set fair (at least for the next few days), but as I have said many times before, here on the Atlantic coast this can change in a heartbeat.

I mentioned in my last post that summer could be at an end. I was wrong! For the last few days (and apparently for the coming days), we are experiencing some of the best weather of this summer. Daytime temperatures are now hitting 30°C (86°F), and we have even enjoyed one or two ‘balmy’ evenings. Inevitably this is having an effect in the vineyards.

When I tasted one or two grapes last week, the sugar was only just apparent, and there was still quite a dominant amount of acidity. The bunches were tightly packed with small berries (not too unusual for albariño), but with surprisingly thin skins, which could be down to the lack of intense heat. As the berries are small, and there has been little or no rain for the last month or two, our yields could well be reduced, and the final quality? Well, we will just have to wait and see.

When I re-tasted our fruit today, there was quite an evolution within the space of one week. The bunches have started to change colour – from a verdant green they are now showing hints of gold (as you might just notice in today’s photo). The most significant change however, is the amount of sugar, which is now much more prominent, coupled with a corresponding drop in acidity, now much more in the background.

Analysis of the fruit is taking place as I write, but if this hot weather persists, then we could be less than a week from harvest. Vamos a ver!

Well, until now August has been a strange month – we have seen a lot of sunshine, but the temperatures? There haven’t been too many days reaching 30°C (86°) or even 25°C, for that matter, and the nights have been….. well, decidedly chilly! Evenings have not really been for t-shirts, but perhaps a little more suited to a sweater or jacket. There have also been a number of cloudy days when the sun has not really broken through until 4pm or 5pm in the afternoon. All-in-all it hasn’t been great weather for the tourists, or perhaps even the grape growers for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, our fruit is still very healthy, it really just means that the maturation of the fruit during August has been a little slower than we would have anticipated. Fortunately, it has remained almost completely dry.

Taking this into account, I would anticipate our harvest starting in the middle of September, and over the next few weeks, we will, as always, be gathering samples and closely studying the results to pick the optimum start date.

Obviously from today’s weather map you cannot actually see the temperature, but at 2pm I can tell you that it is only around 20°C (68°F) on the coast, and just a little warmer inland.

Work in the vineyard is now complete – between now and the harvest (in about four or five weeks time) there is almost nothing more that we can do. Nature will run its course until the time that we pick. In this way our attention now turns to the preparation of the bodega, not only scrubbing the tanks inside and out, but making sure that every wall, every floor and every piece of equipment is as clean as it can be.

In a way, preparation in our tank room has been underway for months. The movement of every wine is calculated and choreographed to ensure that, not only is the wine moved as little as possible (to avoid potential oxidation), but also that it ends up in the right place, as we systematically vacate tanks in the areas designated for the arrival of this year’s new grape must.

Over the last few days, the deep cleaning process has begun, albeit that later this week we will be closing the bodega for a short 10 day break. This will be the last opportunity for our team to rest their bones, and weather permitting, take a bit of sun, before our 2019 campaign gets underway. Of course, there will still be a huge amount of preparation work to undertake when we re-open but at least we have made a start.

In today’s picture you can see our tanks gleaming, almost ‘Van Gogh stylie’…… (thanks PhotoShop!)

With the 2018 harvest only a few days away, as happens every year, our attention turns to the weather. At this time I seem to spend a lot of my spare time browsing weather websites – sad, but true. As I have said many, many times before, it then just becomes a question of deciding which forecast/website to believe. Being so close to the Ocean there is nearly always some degree of variation, and there is a great temptation to select only the sites showing the most favourable conditions. Unfortunately history has shown that this does not work, and generally speaking it’s best to keep an open mind – almost to expect the unexpected. Even when every site is showing wall-to-wall sunshine it is still advisable to check at least once or twice a day, as they can sometimes change on almost an hourly basis. It’s often a tough call knowing what to do, especially when the information is slightly contradictory.

For the last few days Angela has been busy analysing grape samples from different locations, and despite the relatively good weather in August, and so far this month, there is still some variation in ripeness, and we will have to pick in a strictly controlled order – plot by plot (weather permitting, of course!).

When people in the UK mention the ‘hole in the wall’, they are usually referring to a cash machine or ATM. Unfortunately the hole that we have just made in the wall of our grape reception does not dispense cash, but it will still serve an important purpose during the harvest.

The questions we now ask ourselves are – is it at the correct height, is it the correct size, will it work?

So, what is it for? I can hear you asking. Well, unfortunately I’m not going to tell you…. not today at least. I will only say that it will accommodate a new piece of kit (due to arrive any day now), that will significantly improve the efficiency of our harvest (we hope!).

Vamos a ver – Let’s wait and see!

There are certain telltale signs that start to emerge as harvest time gets closer. For example, the products that we use to elaborate our wines start to arrive at our door.

For example, today we have received several cases of yeast. It goes without saying that we would prefer to use naturally occurring yeast (that forms a layer on the skin of the berries), but unfortunately this isn’t always the best option. One of the big problems is sustaining the fermentation until it’s complete. In some wine growing areas, and with some grape varieties this would perhaps not present a problem, but in Rias Baixas our own natural yeasts are really not strong enough to do this work on their own (and more especially with our temperature control working at low temperatures). The result would be half-fermented tanks that need re-seeding; hence our choice to preempt this problem. It’s sad but true that not everything happens as nature intended, and therefore it sometimes requires a helping hand along the way.

The yeast that we select is very neutral, and doesn’t impart any unnatural flavours or aromas to our finished wine. We grow albariño, we sell albariño, and guess what?…. we want it to taste of albariño!

Although we still have a few weeks left to run before we actually start to pick any fruit there is still plenty of work to do in the bodega. (Not too much happens in the vineyards now, it is really just a question waiting for our grapes to attain perfection!)

In the meantime, we are just completing the final bottling, and ensuring that we have enough ‘floor stock’ labelled and ready to go, for any orders that we might receive during the harvest itself. Over the coming weeks we will certainly need to be focused on our wine making process, rather than worrying as to whether we have enough stock to sell!

Thankfully, having warned our customers in advance of this complicated period, many are actually collecting orders now. So whilst we don’t exactly have a queue of trucks waiting to collect, there is still a very healthy flow of wine leaving for overseas.

There is still a lot of work to do in the bodega before harvest time, and so we really have to work out our priorities. Number one on the list (as always) is a pre-harvest deep clean – all the equipment, tanks, pipes, pumps, presses, floors etc… everything!

Having said that we still cannot overlook our long-term commitment to the environment and reducing our carbon footprint wherever possible. Consumption of energy in the bodega spikes at harvest time, when we have both presses and refrigeration equipment running flat out for long periods of the day (refrigeration 24/7 for probably 4 or 5 weeks). In an attempt to compensate, we have embarked on a programme of renewing all our internal lighting. By the time the harvest starts, I believe that 99% of the lighting in the entire bodega will be replaced by low consumption LED.

Large parts of the bodega are already complete, and apart from the energy saving, there is another minor bonus that we have noticed immediately. The light is instant – there is no delay, and the flickering that we have come to associate with the old florescent tubes is history. Suffice to say that the old system will not be missed!

It’s looking very much like this year’s harvest will probably fall around the third or forth week of September, although there is still enough time for this to change. Whenever it eventually arrives, then it goes without saying, the bodega has to be prepared.

Believe it or not there is quite a bit of maths involved in the preparation – working out how many kilos we might have, converting this into liquid (approximate yield), and then working out how many tanks we will need to accommodate this. The reality is that we have already been working towards this for some time, ensuring that we are systematically emptying the tanks nearest to the presses first, as we move through racking and filtering etc. (Very obviously, the less we have to move the wine the better!).

As we move into the final stages, then it’s all about bottling, simply emptying the last few tanks before we finally need them. This week we will bottle two tanks, and then possibly one more before September.