We have now just passed the Spring Equinox and this weekend it will be time to change our clocks to ‘summertime’.

Having said that, as the Easter weekend approaches, our spring weather continues to be erratic. After a couple of day of warm sunshine, we have now returned to our more usual grey skies, showers and much colder temperatures. The forecast for this holiday week is for rain and more cold weather, which is not great for local tourism as some visitors may well be discouraged from even coming at all.

Of course, Galicia is known as being a part of ‘Green Spain’ where we have far more rainfall than other regions. I truly believe that many foreign visitors to Spain (and also this verdant corner of Spain) come with the preconception that Spain is always hot, that it is the land of “sun, sand and sangria”. As I look out of my window at this moment, I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth!

From a wine producing point of view, our hope now is that this combination of very cold, wet conditions does not produce hail, as the new buds of this year’s new growth have already appeared in our vineyards. As always, we simply have to keep our fingers crossed.

The staff and management of Bodegas Castro Martin would like to extend our deepest sympathies to the Royal Family and people of the UK. Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this immensely sad time.

To say that 2020 has been a difficult year would be something of an understatement. It has been very, very tough for the vast majority of businesses, albeit there have been a few that have certainly benefitted from lockdown. Online businesses have done very well, as have (for some obscure reason that I have yet to figure out), the toilet paper manufacturers!

Working with restaurant businesses around the world, Castro Martin suffered quite a significant fall-off in sales, and for a few months at least, most of our activity was focused around the vineyards as they continued to demand our attention, virus or no virus.

It was certainly a bit of a shock to the system when this years harvest finally arrived, as we switched both our bodies and our brains from a semi-dormant state straight into overdrive! Very fortunately, the harvest itself was largely uneventful, and went off very smoothly. Most importantly it would appear that the quality of our fruit in 2020 is exceptionally good and should produce an excellent wine. We shall see.

I leave you with a copy our Vintage Report 2020 , a bit of light reading just to give a flavour of our year here on the Atlantic Coast.

Savagnin is actually the grape that was confused by the Australians for a number of years as being Albariño. I should add that it was not their fault – the vine cuttings were supplied to growers by their own Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation back in the 1980’s, and were actually mistakenly identified as Albariño. It wasn’t until 2009 that the mistake was discovered and confirmed by DNA testing.

Following this discovery, subsequent wines produced from these vines could only be labelled as Savagnin or Traminer… not quite the same.

Of course, Savagnin is better known for some of the wonderful wine of the Jura region of France.

Please read this very interesting Decanter article to learn more.

Last night we spent a long time deliberating about the weather – some website said 75% chance of rain, and some said 20% – so who to believe? In the end we used our old saying, ‘open the curtains in the morning and take a look’! There was no rain, and indeed the sun was just about poking through.

As the picking continued unabated in our vineyards, so we embarked upon our work inside the wine cellar. After a period of ‘cold-settling’ we racked the grape must (juice) into clean tanks. This year the cold settling (when all the pips, stalks, soil etc. ‘settle’ to the bottom of the tank), is especially significant. As there has been little or no rainfall for the last couple of months the vineyards are obviously very dry, and one of the consequences is dust! When the grapes enter the bodega they are, inevitably, covered in a very fine, invisible layer of dust that unfortunately ends up in the presses. As a result, the juice is a dark green/grey colour with a slightly brown hue. The average consumer would certainly be shocked by this and would probably wonder how on earth this dark, opaque juice could eventually end up being a bright, clear white wine. That is really the function of the cold settling…. after a period of 48 hours we end up with a limpid, clean grape juice.

Today’s photo shows the special glass link that we connect to the tank to monitor the clarity of the juice as we transfer it. In Spanish this is known as a ‘mirilla’ – almost like a looking glass, but without Alice!

The first weekend of August signals the start of the annual Albariño Festival in Cambados. There are pretty much two completely different ways to approach the weekend’s celebrations. For the majority it is simply a case of visiting the numerous stands set up in the town centre, each representing a specific wine cellar, where you can buy a chilled glass of albariño to drink at your leisure. There is a lunch session, which is quite quiet and civilised, and an evening session with can be really, really busy and very boisterous – this ‘evening’ session will usually extend long into the night. Personally, this is not the option that I take.

The second way to enjoy the festival is the ‘tunnel of wine’ – approximately 160 wines from more than 60 bodegas, set up as a huge tasting, and much more suited to wine professionals and also visitors that want to see a real cross section of the wines from our denomination. This is probably my favourite tasting of the year. Each wine is accompanied by it’s own technical sheet, so it is easy to focus, and taste in a quiet and calm environment. With 160 samples on offer, I taste everything, but over a two day period – even a hardened professional really couldn’t do it all in one hit!

At this time of year, when I am writing about our harvest, I am always very aware that I am probably repeating the same stories over and over again – such is the nature of our business – a cycle that repeats itself every year. Of course there will be differences, especially as it is nature that plays a very large role in dictating the quality of our fruit. As mere passengers all we can do is adjust to the harvest that we are given. Fortunately 2017 has been very kind to us, and as I have already mentioned, we have some very good raw material to work with.

Having said that everything is repetitive, I really should qualify that by saying that we are always looking for ways to improve what we do and never standing still. We examine our procedures to make them as efficient as possible (getting the fruit from vine to tank as quickly as possible is our prime objective at picking), and once inside the cellar we sometimes make small adjustments too. I say small adjustments because generally speaking we are quite happy with our overall results year-on-year, and so never want to do anything too radical to change that. We always want our albariño to taste, well….. like albariño, or perhaps more specifically, Salnés Valley albariño.

In the past I have mentioned that we are obliged to seed our must with cultured yeasts (as the natural yeasts that occur are simply not strong enough to support a complete fermentation), so clearly this involves a very careful selection. These days it is all to easy to mask the natural fruit with aromas and flavours that are not necessarily representative of our grape variety, and so our first objective in selection is always to make sure that albariño remains at the forefront. Each year we might experiment a little, by making one small tank of wine using a new yeast, and comparing the result to our more usual wine making recipe. It is interesting to note that this year, by co-incidence, we will be using three different yeasts – one of French origin but coming from Australia, one from Auckland in New Zealand and another from Stellenbosch in South Africa. Who said that wine making is not an International business?!

Today’s photo is actually a little premature, but as today is Halloween I couldn’t resist a little joke at Angela’s expense….. The (horror) mask that Angela is wearing is actually a vital piece of safety equipment that we wear each time we are handling sulphur dioxide. The end of the fermentation is the time of year that we add by far the biggest dose of sulphur to our wine. Whilst all the sugar has been consumed and transformed into alcohol, the raw wine is still a bit unstable at this moment. In order to stop any unwanted reactions completely, and to prevent any potential secondary fermentations, we add sulphur to each tank simply to ensure that everything remains completely under control. It serves as an antibiotic and antioxidant protecting our wine from spoilage by bacteria and oxidation.

The pure sulphur dioxide that we use is potentially deadly – even when we use it in a diluted form we still wear a mask – it is quite toxic and can be pretty nasty stuff, but at least when we use it in our wine it’s presence is measured in parts per million. SO2 is already present in our atmosphere, released naturally for example, by volcanoes. Both here, and in our wine making, the quantities in evidence are miniscule. 

Anyway, the end of our fermentations are still probably about a week away, but I thought that being Halloween this photo might scare a few people…. it does me! 

Today’s photo is actually a little premature, but as today is Halloween I couldn’t resist a little joke at Angela’s expense….. The (horror) mask that Angela is wearing is actually a vital piece of safety equipment that we wear each time we are handling sulphur dioxide. The end of the fermentation is the time of year that we add by far the biggest dose of sulphur to our wine. Whilst all the sugar has been consumed and transformed into alcohol, the raw wine is still a bit unstable at this moment. In order to stop any unwanted reactions completely, and to prevent any potential secondary fermentations, we add sulphur to each tank simply to ensure that everything remains completely under control. It serves as an antibiotic and antioxidant protecting our wine from spoilage by bacteria and oxidation.

The pure sulphur dioxide that we use is potentially deadly – even when we use it in a diluted form we still wear a mask – it is quite toxic and can be pretty nasty stuff, but at least when we use it in our wine it’s presence is measured in parts per million. SO2 is already present in our atmosphere, released naturally for example, by volcanoes. Both here, and in our wine making, the quantities in evidence are miniscule. 

Anyway, the end of our fermentations are still probably about a week away, but I thought that being Halloween this photo might scare a few people…. it does me! 

Suffice to say that today’s weather is still fine and sunny, and with all set fair we started our presses earlier than ever. The first load was under way at shortly after 11am, which is just about as early as we can manage. The picking team swoop in at 9.30am (once the fruit has lost any overnight humidity), they load their 20kg baskets, and these are whisked away without any delay to the bodega – a perfect start to the day, until…… Yes, the inevitable technical problem, but this year not one that we would normally anticipate. The large industrial scale that we use for weighing the pallets of grapes as they are unloaded, decided to start giving us completely nonsensical readings – for example, according to the system I now weigh minus 3kg (the new diet must be working better than I thought!). This weighing system is connected directly to the computer that checks in every single load, and whilst we could read the sugar, the pH and the acidity, the weight of each basket remained a total mystery. Time to call the engineer and wait for a response.

Of course the inevitable result of any such delay is the dreaded backlog – once the pressing process is stopped at any point whilst the grapes are still arriving then things, quite literally, begin to pile up. Thankfully the engineer responded pretty quickly, and within a couple of hours we were back up and running. The grape reception area needed some sorting out as the pallets were lined up for weighing, but eventually order was restored, and we carried on on our cool, calm and collected way….. (well, that last part might be a bit of an exaggeration). 

To end the day Angela had one minor disaster of her own – preparing some tank treatments in the laboratory her Blackberry slipped out of the breast pocket of her white coat and landed straight in a bucket of sugary grape must – I think that’s what you have to classify a ‘sticky end’, but if you could chose, I guess it’s not such a bad way to end your working life!

Suffice to say that today’s weather is still fine and sunny, and with all set fair we started our presses earlier than ever. The first load was under way at shortly after 11am, which is just about as early as we can manage. The picking team swoop in at 9.30am (once the fruit has lost any overnight humidity), they load their 20kg baskets, and these are whisked away without any delay to the bodega – a perfect start to the day, until…… Yes, the inevitable technical problem, but this year not one that we would normally anticipate. The large industrial scale that we use for weighing the pallets of grapes as they are unloaded, decided to start giving us completely nonsensical readings – for example, according to the system I now weigh minus 3kg (the new diet must be working better than I thought!). This weighing system is connected directly to the computer that checks in every single load, and whilst we could read the sugar, the pH and the acidity, the weight of each basket remained a total mystery. Time to call the engineer and wait for a response.

Of course the inevitable result of any such delay is the dreaded backlog – once the pressing process is stopped at any point whilst the grapes are still arriving then things, quite literally, begin to pile up. Thankfully the engineer responded pretty quickly, and within a couple of hours we were back up and running. The grape reception area needed some sorting out as the pallets were lined up for weighing, but eventually order was restored, and we carried on on our cool, calm and collected way….. (well, that last part might be a bit of an exaggeration). 

To end the day Angela had one minor disaster of her own – preparing some tank treatments in the laboratory her Blackberry slipped out of the breast pocket of her white coat and landed straight in a bucket of sugary grape must – I think that’s what you have to classify a ‘sticky end’, but if you could chose, I guess it’s not such a bad way to end your working life!

Whether you find yourself in a shop, a supermarket, or in a posh restaurant, making your selection of wine is not only a very, very daunting task, but it is also, of course, purely subjective. The wines that I like or recommend could very easily be hated by someone else. I know this from experience, as in my previous life as a wine buyer the question that I was most often asked was “what wine should I drink”? My reply was always the same….. “drink what you enjoy” – in other words no one can tell you what you should or shouldn’t like.

The next problem might be that if you do find yourself in an expensive restaurant then your situation becomes even more complicated. Firstly, you don’t want to make what could be a very costly mistake, and secondly you don’t want to choose something that is repulsive with your food – hence the fact that there should be an experienced sommelier to help you. If they know their job properly then they should be able to guide you safely through the minefield that is their wine list, and make the appropriate recommendations.

So what do you do in a supermarket? Buy the same wine week-in week-out just to be on the safe side? On a supermarket shelf the two bottles adjacent to each other might be from the same country, but they could be wildly different in style. So what’s the answer?

One UK supermarket chain has at least come up with an original idea – to arrange their display by wine style rather than just by simple geographical origin (as most do). Instead the signs in their aisles will direct you to Fresh, Smooth, Sweet or Intense wines. The supermarket in question, William Morrisons, have also taken the idea one step further…. they have devised a test to help guide you to a specific category of wine that you might enjoy. Perhaps a bit too sophisticated an idea for your average supermarket shopper, but an idea that breaks the mould and for that reason alone, has to be applauded. Incidentally, I took the test myself and was just a little perplexed by the result, telling me that my preference was for sweet wine (which is actually not the case), so if you want to play along just click here and take the test yourself. It’s simple, it’s fun and it’s actually quite well made even if you don’t agree with the result.

Whether you find yourself in a shop, a supermarket, or in a posh restaurant, making your selection of wine is not only a very, very daunting task, but it is also, of course, purely subjective. The wines that I like or recommend could very easily be hated by someone else. I know this from experience, as in my previous life as a wine buyer the question that I was most often asked was “what wine should I drink”? My reply was always the same….. “drink what you enjoy” – in other words no one can tell you what you should or shouldn’t like.

The next problem might be that if you do find yourself in an expensive restaurant then your situation becomes even more complicated. Firstly, you don’t want to make what could be a very costly mistake, and secondly you don’t want to choose something that is repulsive with your food – hence the fact that there should be an experienced sommelier to help you. If they know their job properly then they should be able to guide you safely through the minefield that is their wine list, and make the appropriate recommendations.

So what do you do in a supermarket? Buy the same wine week-in week-out just to be on the safe side? On a supermarket shelf the two bottles adjacent to each other might be from the same country, but they could be wildly different in style. So what’s the answer?

One UK supermarket chain has at least come up with an original idea – to arrange their display by wine style rather than just by simple geographical origin (as most do). Instead the signs in their aisles will direct you to Fresh, Smooth, Sweet or Intense wines. The supermarket in question, William Morrisons, have also taken the idea one step further…. they have devised a test to help guide you to a specific category of wine that you might enjoy. Perhaps a bit too sophisticated an idea for your average supermarket shopper, but an idea that breaks the mould and for that reason alone, has to be applauded. Incidentally, I took the test myself and was just a little perplexed by the result, telling me that my preference was for sweet wine (which is actually not the case), so if you want to play along just click here and take the test yourself. It’s simple, it’s fun and it’s actually quite well made even if you don’t agree with the result.