After more than a month of sustained sunshine and high temperatures the weather finally changed around the middle of August. A few days of rain and grey skies transformed the completion of our summer completely, and hopefully might be of some benefit to our harvest. A little rain, at the right moment (especially after such a dry period), could add a little more substance to the fruit. The only danger being that if the berries are small and thick skinned, a burst of prolonged, heavy rain could cause the skins to split and allow rot to set in. Thankfully, this does not appear to be the case. At this time the bunches are slowly changing colour, and whilst we can taste our fruit now, it still has a week or two to evolve before we start picking. (It appears that we might start around 7th September).

Of course, this year’s harvest will have quite a different look, with many new rules imposed upon us as a result of the Covid crisis. Obviously, everyone will work in masks (which is obliged by law in Spain), and we will still have to maintain our social distances. There will also be copious amounts of hand gel used, albeit well away from the grapes! Authorities have also created a good deal of extra documentation attached to the harvest process, just for good measure, but that is a whole other story!

I confess that I have been rather distracted by Covid news over the last few weeks, mainly because not too much else has been happening elsewhere. I now realise however, that I have completely neglected the single most important event in our vine growing calendar…. the flowering!

I am happy to tell you that our flowering passed almost perfectly, largely because May turned out to be a dry and quite sunny month. During the last week it was actually very hot, with temperatures well into the 30’s °C (86+ °F). At the end of it all it appears that there might be just a few less bunches than last year, but it’s still early days and a lot can still happen over the coming months.

As there is not really too much to look at in the vineyard, I decided to make a small collage to show the evolution of flowering. The left hand picture (at the end of May), shows the flowering itself. The middle shot (taken a day or two ago), is shortly after the flowering where the berries are just starting to develop and become recognisable. And the right hand picture shows how the bunches will look in a few weeks, when the berries have developed into small peas (before they eventually swell and change colour).

During these difficult times it can be really difficult to find something positive and upbeat to write about. The television news has become somewhat boring and repetitive, as there is clearly only one story that people want to talk about… I will not mention it by name for the sake of my own sanity!

Meanwhile, the good news is that in Spain we are now enjoying our increased levels of freedom, and together with a bit a warm sunshine, this is certainly helping to lift our spirits. Work is of course, continuing in our vineyards, and recent  periods of rain and sunshine have served to provoke some quite vigorous growth. The downside of these the warm and humid conditions is that some spraying has been necessary in order to reduce the risk of potential disease.

Finally, on a more positive note, pallets have been packed and dispatched to the U.S.A.! Of course, they will take some time to cross the Atlantic and so we can only assume that our importer feels that the re-opening of their market is imminent. We hope that this level of renewed optimism might be contagious, not only in the U.S., but also in our other export markets around the world. Having said that, for the moment at least,we all need to remain patient.

Despite business grinding to a halt, there are some elements of what we do that carry on as normal. Our vines, for example, continue to grow, pandemic or no pandemic.

With the pruning and attaching to the wires now complete, we start on general vineyard maintenance – small, but yet, significant chores. These include removing any unwanted growth (for example, small shoots that start to grow out of the main trunk of the vine), removing snails (that climb and devour the new shoots), and attaching new pheromone traps (this eco-friendly trap uses synthetic pheromones to cause confusion and diverting mating insects away from the vines). In addition to this, and largely depending on what the weather does over the next week or two, will also determine if any treatments are needed, but clearly we still have to monitor the vineyards closely to assess what is needed.

(Today’s photo not only shows the current vine development, but also shows one of our pheromone traps)

Parts of Europe (focused mainly around the UK), have been battered by a series of winter storms in recent weeks. The equivalent of months of torrential rain falling within hours (as seems to be a recurring story around the world these days). The most significant of these storms are given names by the countries that first detect them, based solely on the idea that they will be easier to track by everyone if they can be more easily identified. The latest of these three storms was named Jorge, as it was first tracked by the Spanish Met office, albeit that it arrived on UK shores long before it reached Spain.

Last night we braced ourselves for a stormy time here in Galicia, but whilst it was certainly wet and windy, it was not nearly as destructive as it had been in the UK. A bit of a non-event to say the least.

Today is actually quite sunny, and not anything like the conditions that our team expected to face as they finish the final days of pruning. It all goes to prove that our weather predictions here on the Atlantic Coast are, well, sometimes quite unpredictable!

For the last couple of weeks our team have been out in the vineyards starting the long, labourious task of pruning our vines. As I say nearly every year, this really is a neck/back breaking, thankless job, especially as we appear to have returned to our more traditional Galician autumn/winter weather – cold and wet!

I mentioned a few days ago that during the first days of December we finally welcomed a little sunshine (after a month or more of continuous rain). Well, this respite was short-lived. The rain has now returned, and once again our guys will be working with the rain in their faces!

I think that it would be fair to say that November was the wettest month that we have had for some time – probably even wetter than any single month of last winter. There was hardly a day that passed when it didn’t rain. It was grey, damp and cold; all the characteristics of a typical Galician winter. However, after two very dry summers, it was really what we needed, in order to at least begin the job of replenishing our somewhat depleted water table. Having said that I rather suspect that we will need even more rain over the coming months to complete the task.

The beginning of December has at least provided at least a little respite. For the last couple of days the sky has been blue and the late autumn landscape has taken on a whole new complexion. (It’s amazing how just a little sun can change the whole atmosphere of a place – especially after such a prolonged dull and damp period).

Inevitably, with the bright skies come the cold temperatures, and today we witnessed our first ground frost of the year. With our pruning already underway I am sure that our guys working in the vineyard will prefer cold and sunny to grey and wet!

In theory at least today should be the last day of our 2019 campaign. We are finishing the last part of our Pazo vineyard and then all that remains is one parcel in our vineyard here at the bodega. Of course this means that at least our last grapes don’t have too far to travel, and we should be able to gather everything in more quickly.

Although there is not too much happening in the vineyards, inside the cellar the real work is just beginning as we get the fermentations under way. The majority of our wine making process is much the same every year, but having said that we do not stand still. We will be experimenting with at least two or three tanks this year, trying some new techniques and perhaps some new products (usually in the form of different types of yeast). As I have always said, we always work with quite neutral yeasts, as we do not really want our wines to impart any strange flavours or aftertastes – we simply want our customers to be tasting the grape variety itself, something typical and certainly nothing artificial.

Of course our yeast suppliers always arrive charged with glossy brochures, new products making various claims about what they can do. We do not dismiss them completely, but rather ‘dip our toe’ by perhaps making one or two tanks of something different. The proof, of course, is always after the fermentation is complete, when we raise the first samples to our lips.

And so, with year another year behind us the sun sets on the Salnés Valley, and the final curtain falls on the 2019 harvest. All that remains now is a bit of wine making, and of course, my annual vintage report! Thank you and goodnight…..

Today we start picking in one of our most important ‘Family Estate’ vineyards – El Pazo. As you can perhaps make out from the photos, this vineyard has some of our oldest vines, many between 50 and 70 years old.

The final days of the harvest are always the most frustrating, as we sit and wait for the final grapes to roll in – more often than not, at the end of the evening. We try to keep our cellar team occupied with odd jobs, and indeed, we often send a couple out to help with the picking (with the proviso that they accompany every grape delivery back to the bodega to help offload them). Despite all this there is still a lot of waiting!

On my side, I am busy planning and then re-planning the cellar movements, the number of tanks that we are going to need to accommodate the must (and unfortunately the final number often has to be revisited). The movements can be a bit of a chess game – part of the cellar has clean must after racking, whilst the other half is the most recent must which is still left for settling. The reason I have to re-plan is because as the kilos arrive, we have to revise our totals, and therefore the number and location of tanks that will be used for fermentation (which we will start tomorrow). The concern that we have is that we are not left with half-filled tanks once all the fruit has been collected!

We have now broken the back of this year’s harvest, indeed, we are now moving toward the last couple of vineyard locations. In the meantime, work is already well underway in the cellar itself as we chill the fresh grape must to help it settle. After a day or two when all the impurities have fallen to the bottom of the tanks then the juice can then be moved, or ‘racked’ into clean tanks ready for fermentation.

In a way Monday turned out to be quite similar to Sunday – smooth and uneventful. As always, once we start picking we like to continue without stopping and so, quite understandably, when we have rain looming on the horizon we do try to step up the pace as much as we can. The weather radar still showed rain and some thunder moving towards our area, and we were anticipating that it might arrive with us at around 5pm (when we would normally stop picking at 7pm). 5pm came and went, and although we could see dark skies on two sides of the bodega, we somehow managed to escape, as did our vineyards. We heard later that it had been raining within 10km of our location, but luckily we didn’t see a drop….. until about 10pm when there were quite literally just a few spots of rain, but then not even enough to wet the ground. In any event, by that time, all grapes were safely inside and already passing through our presses.

Today’s photo shows our harvest cases drying in the sun. Once they are emptied they are immediately washed, ready to be used again. It is really important to wash the cases as soon as they have been emptied, as they inevitably have a little juice inside, which, if left to dry, becomes hard and difficult to remove, almost like a layer of nail varnish!