新年快乐 / 新年快樂 (Xīnnián kuàilè) – Happy New Year! Today is the start of the Year of the Ox, and of course, we all hope that it will be an improvement on the Year of the Rat that preceded it. I guess that like all other celebrations at the moment, the 2021 party will be somewhat subdued.

In the meantime I am happy to report that after our first Covid victim, that the Castro Martin team is now back to full strength, and work continues on the pruning (albeit now just a little delayed). Of course, we are simply happy that this was a fairly mild case of the virus and there don’t appear to be any long term side-effects.

Out in the vineyards the weather has been quite miserable – grey, cold and with intermittent rain, some quite torrential. Not a great start to February.

Depending upon your personal politics the brightest point of 2021 so far might be the inauguration of a new President in the United States. Meanwhile, here in Spain, things are not quite so good…

For the last couple of weeks the weather has been completely miserable – a combination of heavy rain and days of low cloud, mist and yet more rain. Fortunately, temperatures have risen just a little since the frost at the beginning of the month.

At Castro Martin, not only is it very quiet on the business front (which is quite normal for early January), but also we have had our first Covid victim! The wife of one of our vineyard guys has tested positive. Fortunately, our man has been working outside pruning for the last few weeks, and has hardly set foot inside the main building of the bodega (quite apart from the fact that he himself has not shown any signs of the virus, as yet). Of course, he will now stay at home, in isolation, and be tested before he is allowed to return.

Meanwhile, our local lockdown rules are getting tighter, and once again, we are only allowed out for essential shopping, work or exercise. The wearing of masks in public is obligatory, and failure to comply is an immediate €600 non-negotiable fine!

(My picture today is intended to offset the doom and gloom just a little).

FOOTNOTE: Since posting we have been informed that David, our vineyard guy, has now been tested positive.

Well, 2021 is here, and of course, we all have our fingers crossed that things can only get better (as they say in the song)!

There is not too much activity inside the bodega at the start of the New Year, but pruning still continues apace. Whilst the first week of January has been sunny, it has also been bitterly cold. Temperatures not much above freezing, and in the last couple of days, a biting wind from the north. Having said that, cold and sunshine, is of course, much better than cold and rain.

Whilst it has been cold in Galicia, many other regions of Spain (including Madrid) are under a blanket of thick snow. In some areas it was so extreme that the army was mobilised to help distribute vital supplies, including the Covid vaccines.

With just a day to go before we start our Christmas break we are now just mopping up the final few gift pack orders, in the hope that they might still arrive in time for the holidays. Certainly it has been a year for buying online, even in Spain, where until recently it seems that many people were reluctant to trust in internet shopping (or perhaps it’s more the fear of losing their money?). Of course we live in a country where the vast majority of people still feel more at ease with face-to-face transactions, and to be honest, I don’t blame them, especially when we witness what is happening to our high streets. No doubt the 2020 pandemic has only helped to hugely accelerate the shift towards both online communications, and shopping (to the detriment of a great many, more traditional businesses).

As always at this time of year, our efforts are still very much focused on pruning, and the very changeable, largely wet weather is not making the chore any easier. They do however, say that there will be sun on Christmas Day.

With that in mind, we raise a glass to you all…. Stay safe, stay well and drink (Castro Martin) albariño!

Incredibly we are already half way through December and the Christmas break is almost upon us. Traditionally this is one of our busiest times of year, but perhaps not so much in 2020. With restaurant sales at more a less a standstill (for fairly obvious reasons), we have to rely on our internet and gift pack business. Whilst we are very lucky that at least a few of our business customers still have the wherewithal to afford gift packs, regrettably non of this business is overseas and is focused purely on our own domestic market. Still, better than no business at all.

So with the gift packing business continuing inside, the rest of our team battles against the elements out in the vineyards. The recent cold and wet weather has simply made the job of pruning just that bit more unpleasant. Not a job for the faint hearted!

At this time of year our team have just started work in the vineyards. Now that the leaves have fallen from the vines, the wood is exposed, and the sap recedes from the branches (owing to the cooler autumn nights), we can finally get to work on the pruning. Ironically, whilst there is little activity in the bodega as Covid takes its toll on our order books, the vines now demand our full-time, undivided attention, through until the end of winter. Pruning, is a slow, labourious task, and can be very unpleasant in inclement winter weather.

On the subject of weather, since the end of our harvest it has been quite changeable. More or less as we would expect for this time of year. Some rain, quite a few days of ‘mizzle’ (a cross between mist and drizzle), and a few odd sunny days just thrown in for good measure. Indeed, the weekend just gone, was good… too good in fact. The mid-November temperature hit 24°C (75°F), provoking a few people to take to the local beaches. Of course, even local travel is quite heavily restricted during our current, partial lockdown, and so I guess that it was only the lucky few (that live close to the coast) who could take full advantage.

My picture today shows the Ria of Pontevedra, and on the adjacent hillsides you can just make out the small fires, as people burn their cuttings. The small finishing boats in the foreground are, of course, a very common feature.

OK, so you’ve already guessed it. As we move into our seventh and final day of picking the weather is hot and sunny…. again! Today is very much a ‘mopping up’ operation as we gather the final bunches from our Pazo vineyard. As I have mentioned in previous years we don’t necessarily pick vineyard by vineyard, as, in the case of El Pazo, it is picked sector by sector, on different days, according to the maturity of the fruit. Indeed, we actually gathered the first grapes from a plot in El Pazo some six days ago (on Tuesday).

Harvests are often about making calculations of kilos, movements and logistics etc.. For example, we already know the maximum and minimum loads of our presses, but then what happens if we have a few kilos left after the last press is filled? The secret of the final day is to wait until we have every last kilo gathered in, and then calculate how we are going to process them, splitting and sharing the loads between our two presses. The same rules apply to our tanks. For example, there is a minimum level of juice that we need in each tank in order to achieve optimum temperature control. We can calculate the litres of juice from each press (more or less), but we have to spread this evenly between tanks simply to ensure that we don’t have a few odd litres left over at the end of the day!

You may recall that in a previous post I forecasted a lunchtime finish, whereas our last grapes were actually unloaded at 8pm. I should have known better, we always overrun on the last day.

So tomorrow we can focus all our efforts to the grape must, racking and working on fermentation. In the end the forecast says that it might not rain tomorrow, but we have all our grapes safely inside so I don’t really care too much!!!

Yesterday I mentioned that today could be our last day, but it appears that perhaps I was just being a bit over optimistic. When I sat down and did a few calculations late last night I now know that it would be pretty much impossible for our picking team to gather everything today (even though they have been working at hyper-speed). My revised guess is that we will probably finish at lunchtime on Sunday. At least this should mean that our people can enjoy a meal with their families, as is the tradition here in Galicia.

And yes, it is yet another hot, sunny day!

The other thing that I did not mention is that we have also more fruit than we planned for. Before the harvest we walk the vineyards in an attempt to assess the potential yield of the vines. Even with years of experience it is still only our best ‘guesstimate’ and naturally we have to allow for some margin of error. (Bear in mind that we also have to rely on the estimates of our grape suppliers too). It appears that we were just a little conservative, possibly because after such a warm, dry summer we anticipated a comparatively low yield. The effect of this is that we have to check that we have enough materials for the wine making (yeasts, nutrients etc.), and then we have to re-plan the tank movements, to ensure that the extra grape must is evenly distributed, and that we don’t end up with any half-filled tanks. It’s actually much more complicated than you might think!

By the way, my short video shows the ‘fangos’ at the bottom of the tank after we have removed the clean wine. As you can see it’s almost like a mud (from the dust and soil), but also contains a few odd grapes and skins from the pressing.

Today we start in sombre mood, not only for the victims of this terrible virus, but also as we remember the events of 9/11, 19 years ago in New York City….

Our fifth day is yet another hot one. Of course, we shouldn’t complain as this is preferable to cold, wet conditions, and makes life just that little bit less stressful for us.

Today we are working in our ‘bodega’ vineyard – a small one hectare site at the side of the bodega. Of course, this means that grapes are delivered almost as soon as they are picked, and we have a constant flow throughout the day. Indeed, at times the ‘flow’ was almost overwhelming and the reception was processing grapes at warp speed! Our picking team are also working extra hours in order that we can finish either tomorrow, or most probably on Sunday (just before the weather is due to break on Monday). The forecast also says that tomorrow will be 33°/34°C (93°F). Let’s just hope that our weary bones will survive.

I failed to mention that down in the cellar our wine making chores are also underway. Once the wine has ‘settled’ for a couple of days and the fine coating of dust on the grape skin has fallen to the bottom of the tank, then we simply have to ‘rack’ the clean grape must into new tanks, leaving the debris behind almost like a kind of sludge at the bottom. This dust and debris is known in Spain as fangos.

Day four – yet another hot sunny day, but perhaps not for long. The forecast for the beginning of next week shows the possibility of rain. The race is now on to finish by the weekend!

Of course, after saying that yesterday that everything went smoothly, today was a different story. The problem was not with the harvest itself, but rather with our brand new temperature control system in the bodega. (At the moment we are using this to chill the grape must in our tanks, simply as it settles better when it is a little colder).

In our bodega we have mainly small tanks of 9,000 litres, but we also have a number of larger tanks of 25,000 litres. The temperature control of the small tanks worked perfectly, but when we fired up the large tanks, then it was a case of “Houston, we have a problem”! They simply didn’t do what we wanted them to do. Tanks that were switched off started to chill, and tanks that we wanted to use simply wouldn’t chill at all. We called the technicians who installed the new system….

OK, so the technicians came and went, apparently leaving everything in working order – except that it was not! Several hours after the problem became apparent it was finally resolved by one of our own guys. He discovered that all the electro-valves had been installed in reverse! Who needs technicians?!