It’s been a while since I mentioned our grape reception, simply because the work had been placed on a back burner for a while as we completed other, more pressing jobs. As you may already know, this space is used exclusively during the harvest period and therefore our only objective is to ensure that the construction is complete before the end of August (harvest is anticipated for early September).

The final remaining chore is to finish the floor (or is that the wall?), with some heavy duty tiling – probably only a few days work, before we can then give the area a thorough cleaning.

I have to apologise for today’s photo, I couldn’t resist. It was just the way that David was studying the floor that gave me the idea to play with the angles a little. (Hopefully people might have a double-take when they’re browsing!)

I know that this gets pretty boring, but please don’t forget that our harvest and wine making is a cyclical process that repeats itself over and over again (wow, I was tempted to make a comment about Angela there, but I resisted). Having said that, no two vintages are exactly alike, although the build up and preparation that we have to make is more or less the same.

Apart from all the bottling that we are doing, we also have maintenance guys working in the bodega. Not our own guys this time, but outside contractors who service all the heavy machinery that we rely on at harvest. Of course, the key pieces of kit are the presses, and so, quite naturally, these get a priority inspection and service. When the engineers work on the presses then, quite naturally, they have to test them. The noise that our presses make is very distinctive and reverberates around the whole bodega……. and for us this noise can only mean one thing – harvest is imminent! Long days and nights in the bodega are beckoning. 

It’s been a while since I mentioned the weather, so here’s a quick update. The last week or so has been very changeable, some sunny days, some cloudy days, some wet days. The rain that we have had has been light, perhaps just enough to refresh the vines, and daytime temperatures have not been excessive (usually around the mid-20’s C – about 75-80°F). After inspection today, on a clear, sunny morning, our fruit is still looking healthy and progressing nicely. 

At this time of year planning, and more especially, forward planning is the key.

I mentioned only the other day that we had been busy racking wines, but the other very important procedure in our pre-harvest planning is bottling. Freeing up a few extra tanks to accommodate the new grape must. However, this year, there has been one major hiccup in that process.

Our bottle manufacturer was hit by a ransomware extortion attack, which pretty much closed down their entire production for a number of weeks. Obviously not having bottles during our peak bottling period is a bit of a handicap to say the least, but in the circumstances there was nothing we could do, except to wait patiently until our supplier’s systems were fully restored.

Unfortunately our first delivery of bottles last week was also a bit of a disaster! We had been promised that our truck was loaded and leaving the factory in Bourgos, arriving with us first thing the following morning (with our entire team poised waiting to unload and start work). Not only did it not arrive, but we subsequently discovered that it was in fact, never loaded. No real explanation was ever offered.

Suffice to say that I am always at a bit of a loss to understand why, at the same time every year, Spanish industry appears to be taken by surprise when the holiday season kicks in, and they find themselves short-handed. Malware apart, there are always delays and missed deadlines when it comes to supply and delivery. Probably the biggest surprise of all is that I continue to be frustrated by these problems…