November 5th is Guy Fawkes night (or bonfire night) in the UK. It celebrates, or perhaps I should say, commemorates the failed ‘gunpowder plot’, when in 1605 Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were caught attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament – seat of the UK Government.

More than a century later it became a tradition for children to make a grotesque effigy of Guy, parade it in the streets, and then burn it at the end of the day. More recently fireworks were added to the festivities, and the date has been celebrated ever since.

Now, I have been tasting wine for much longer than I care to remember, and at the peak of my wine buying career I would easily sample 100+ wines a day. Today the demand on my tastebuds is much more restrained, and often limited to tasting a couple of dozen tanks in our own cellar (which I do with Angela on a pretty regular basis).

Of course our tanks are all 100% Albariño and therefore the differences from one tank to the next can be fairly miniscule, and the evolution over time very subtle, but then there is something else that I notice from time to time….

There are days when I emerge from the cellar positively glowing about the quality of our wine, and then there are other days, when I am not quite so ecstatic. Now, this could be down to me – perhaps my own palate is not as sharp as it should be on certain days, although this is not a phenomenon that I have been aware of in the past. So what could be the reason for this apparent variation in quality? Could it be the moon?

Some UK supermarkets are now actually arranging wine tasting sessions around good and bad days as determined by the lunar calendar. According to a German grandmother called Maria Thun (back in the 1950’s) the calendar should be divided into four categories according to the relative positions of moon and stars – “fruit”, “flower”, “leaf” and “root”. Wine is best on fruit days, followed by flower, leaf and root days (best avoided completely on a root day). Tesco and Marks & Spencer are the latest supporters of this philosophy, and the two supermarkets now have a policy of inviting press and wine critics to taste their wine only on days which the calendar says are favourable.

Of course sceptics say that there is no proof to support Ms Thun’s theory, whilst on the other side believers argue that wine is, after all, a living organism and can therefore be affected by cycles of the moon. Finally, the more logical, scientifically minded amongst us might simply say that the apparent variations in taste are more likely to be caused by changes in atmospheric pressure, but who really knows for sure – it could be just in our imagination?

Perhaps it’s appropriate, with Halloween just behind us, that it all sounds like a bit of witchcraft. Personally I quite like the moon theory, albeit that the logical part of my brain tells me that it all sounds just a little far-fetched!

I must confess that I don’t subscribe to many wine magazines these days, partially because it’s quite expensive getting them sent by airmail, but mostly because I somehow never find the time to read them.

Unless someone lets me know, it’s therefore quite possible that the odd article, review or recommendation of our wine slips under the radar. This happened to me back in August…..

Unbeknown to me we were recommended as Wine of the Month in the UK’s Decanter magazine, as well as being listed as one of the Top Ten summer wines for picnics. A bit late to discover this in November!

They commented about our Castro Martin albarino:

“A great opportunity to try the cult white grape of Spain. This example shows apricot and peachy fruit with some sweet spice. The palate has a nice texture alongside a pure minerality and intense tropical fruit characters; good weight and length”

Time to dig out the pic-a-nic basket Boo Boo (if you’re younger than about 40, you will probably have no idea what this phrase relates to).

The phenomenon of noise during harvest time is not really something that I have considered too much before, or at least until today when we turned off some of our noisy equipment and peace was finally restored in the bodega.

Click on image to enlarge

So, it’s been a few days since my last blog entry, but as I think I mentioned we have been really busy, bottling and generally catching up with post-harvest jobs. Alcoholic fermentations are almost finished, and everything is still looking pretty good….. we remain optimistic.

As a bit of light relief I just wanted to make another post about road signs, but this time nothing to do with directions to our own bodega.

The local council have recently updated many road signs in our area, including those highlighting recommended wine routes. Each type of sign has a colour coded background, so that you can instantly identify the category of attraction or monument being signposted. For example, the old wine route signs used to have a dark, bottle green background, and these have now been updated with a horrible, rancid, pale green colour – not the most attractive selection.

The most dramatic of these changes is, without doubt, the historical monuments – formerly a sober brown colour, the signs have now been changed to a rather sickly, fluorescent mustard-yellow colour. Of course you might imagine that such a bright colour would stand out, whereas in fact the exact opposite is true.

The picture above shows a fairly huge sign at the side of our local Autovia, directing would be visitors to a nearby monastery, or at least that is what I think it says! The problem is that the new sign is almost totally illegible until you are within about 10 or 15 metres of it, and in very bright sunlight you can barely read the lettering at all.

This has not gone unnoticed in the local press, and questions are being asked as to how this colour could have been selected in the first place……. either bad taste, or perhaps just poor judgement? Out here in the countryside is doesn’t take much to make the local news!

You can just about see the moon’s horizon, but earth is not visible

Yesterday was probably one of our busiest days in the cellar – plenty of wine making action, not to mention a visit from our Australian importer, and an Australian journalist – travelling seperately, but both, totally by co-incidence, arriving with us on the same day….. Oh, and by the way, it was a public holiday in Spain just for good measure!

The only option, in order to accomodate everything, was a very early start, and doing as much as we could before they both arrived around lunch time. We had already made clear, very early on, that going out for lunch was not an option, and that they should either eat before, or bring a sandwich! I have to say that we are usually much more friendly and hospitable than this, but unfortunately at this time of year it is the rapidly emerging wine that dictates our timetable – time and good wine waits for no man.

One of our current jobs in the cellar is adding a fining agent to the fermentation in the shape of Wyoming bentonite. Bentonite is a special type of clay that was first named in Wyoming in the 19th century, and is distinct from other clays in that it is formed from volcanic ash. Without trying to get too technical, it is a negatively charged substance which when hydrated and added to wine, will attract the positively charged particulate in the wine. As bentonite hydrates and swells it becomes like a sponge, and after mixing it thoroughly into the wine, the positively charged matter in the wine attaches to the bentonite. The weight of the molecules then cause the matter to drop to the bottom of the tank and become what is known as ‘finings’.

There you are, clear as mud, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Anyway, my picture today is not from a moon landing as the title would imply, but is merely the surface of the bentonite solution after it had been hydrated. Pretty…..

‘Perfect’ merlot grapes in Bordeaux

No sooner had I declared that we were pretty happy with our Albariño harvest this year than the Bordeaux producers jumped on the bandwagon and claimed to have produced their best crop in 60 years. It seems like they have already forgotten 2005 which they described as the ‘perfect’ vintage, not to mention that it is probably far too early in the campaign to make such bold statements. Usually such comments are reserved for the annual tasting which is held in Bordeaux every spring following the vintage (when the wines are still very much in their infancy). The cynical side of me tends to ask if this might have something to do with the very poor Primeur sales that they have experienced in the region over the last two years.

Now, I am not saying that it won’t be a good, or possibly even a great vintage (and certainly a bit of early hype never goes amiss), but it should be remembered that this comment was made by the director of the Bordeaux Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences, so you might say that he has a bit of a vested interest. I can also remember one French producer who claimed to have at least 4 or 5 ‘vintages of the century’ during the 1980’s alone – in the end such claims just start to lose any credibility.

An interesting footnote for numerologists or perhaps just for those who like to compile vintage charts – it would seem that 2009 has given us yet another good vintage ending with the year ‘9’. OK, so it’s a sweeping generalisation, but if you look back there are far more good vintages than bad ones, not to mention one or two truly exceptional – 1949, 1959 for example (not that I have any of these in my private cellar).

Apart from everything else that is happening in the bodega at the moment – cleaning, preparing orders, drinking tea, etc. we also have the small but not insignificant matter of making wine.

After the removal of some impurities by chilling the new grape must and allowing it to ‘settle’, we allow the temperature to recover and then begin the process of innoculation (in reality a task that was completed a few days ago). Now, some in our area might claim that they ferment their wine with the natural yeasts that live on the grape skins, but in our own experience this simply does not work. The ‘wild’ yeasts are just not strong enough to survive the rigours of a full alcoholic fermentation, which is why they have to be augmented each time with cultured yeasts.

It is quite amusing when the yeast salesman comes knocking these days – he virtually opens his catalogue, and asks “well, what flavour do you want?” In the case of our bodega the answer is always the same – we want a very neutral yeast that does not mask or alter the natural fruit of the albariño grape. In my former life as a wine buyer I always looked for wines that were the most typical of the area from which they originated, a ‘textbook wine’ if you will. Today nothing has changed – Angela and I still focus our efforts on making the most pure and typical albariño that we can…… a wine that does exactly what is says on the label.

The photo above shows the yeast just after it has been rehydrated, and before we add it to the tanks. At this moment the cellar is filled with a wonderful aroma (assuming that you like the smell of yeast), and Angela just can’t resist getting her hands into the foaming mass to help start it working. In fact, if I didn’t stop her she would probably start eating the stuff!

With the picking over, and our tanks filled with fresh grape must, we switch into deep clean mode. The sticky juice just gets everywhere – floors, walls, stairs, door handles – you name it. Then of course, there is the equipment – tanks, presses, pumps, hoses, not to mention the odd couple of thousand baskets that we use to collect the fruit – all covered with a gluey, syrup-like coating. The pressure washers are working overtime.