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?!

We move into our third day with yet more blue sky and brilliant sunshine. Yesterday the temperature touched 30°C (86°F), which can make picking a little uncomfortable, more especially when wearing a mask. Of course, the big advantage of our region is that the vast majority of fruit is grown using the pergola system, which in the hot sun at least provides a little bit of shade for our team.

By the end of the evening the bodega was functioning very smoothly (I really shouldn’t really tempt fate), as grapes arrived in a very timely fashion. No sooner had we unloaded one press than the next was ready to go…. if only all days were like this! After three days we must be somewhere near our halfway point.

Today’s photo shows a glass of our 2020 grape must. Admittedly, this example has been ‘settling’ for a day or two, and is much cleaner than the murky brown liquid that emerges from the press. The clarity of the juice is really determined by the amount of rainfall that we have as we approach the harvest. If there is no rain at all then bunches can be covered with a film of fine dust blown up from the ground. Whilst this is not necessarily visible to the naked eye, once the grapes have been pressed we can end up with quite a dark, unattractive liquid. (It tastes great, but simply doesn’t look particularly appealing). However, this year, as we experienced a few days of rain a week or two ago, our fruit is comparatively clean. It is thick and unctuous and should make a very attractive wine. Time will tell!

Whilst the weather is actually warm, bright and sunny, we start our second day under a bit of a cloud, as we hear stories from the Rioja region of spreading virus and further lockdowns. As if a harvest is not challenging enough, I cannot begin to imagine what it might be like with even more strict controls than we already have. Hard, physical work wearing a mask is not easy, especially when the weather is hot and sunny.

So today we continue picking in our second biggest vineyard, Castrelo, which provides some of the fruit for our Family Estate wine (the rest coming from El Pazo). This year we have modified our transport system a little, which not only makes it more efficient, but also helps to reduce our carbon footprint. Castrelo is our most distant vineyard, about 10km from the bodega by road, and in the past we have transported our fruit using a tractor with trailer. We can load 110 cases on a full tractor/trailer, and each round trip takes about 40 minutes (excluding loading and unloading).

This year we are palletising our 20kg cases in the vineyard, and then loading 12 full pallets of grapes onto a medium sized truck. One truck load is the equivalent of four tractor loads, and so this will obviously help in reducing our carbon footprint – not to mention that when the fruit arrives it is already on pallets and easier to manipulate in our grape reception.

For the technically minded, the balance of our grape must is very good this year – pH and acidity at the levels we would normally hope for. As with the last couple of vintages, the only slight anomaly is the alcohol, which, after a long, hot summer is just a little high again. At this point my guess is that we will probably land somewhere between 12.5% and 13% alc., but with the acidity that we have, this should not present any problem.

Yesterday (Sunday) every person in our picking team went to hospital….. for a Covid test (happily no one tested positive).

On a bright, sunny, albeit windy Monday morning we kicked off the 2020 campaign, with yet more health checks! This time it was a simple temperature test, with every detail carefully noted. This was followed by a brief training session about the various Covid protocols in the vineyard, mostly to do with the handling of equipment and social distancing. This year there will be no picking in groups, every individual will be distributed evenly throughout the vineyard. (Probably quite boring for our team, with not too much opportunity for social interaction, but in 2020 this is our ‘new normal’, at least for the time being). We are, of course, obliged to take this pandemic very seriously.

By the afternoon, our presses were already working, with their familiar droning motors echoing throughout the bodega. This is really the moment that you know the harvest is underway.

The tasting of the first juice revealed a bright, intense fruit, typical of the albariño grape, and backed by a very good level of acidity. It will be some time before we can assess the yield of the 2020 harvest (volume of litres per kilo of grapes). We are especially cautious after last year’s low yield, and a very dry summer this year. Only time will tell.