The last few months of 2018 were miserable, wet and autumnal, but temperatures did not really dip too much and remained several degrees above freezing. Plants and trees that would normally be dormant at this time of year were still alive and active. Of course, in the case of our vines, not only do the plants need to have a dormant period (helping to reduce bacteria and having a therapeutic effect), but freezing conditions can also help to kill off vineyard insects and pests.

It was not until the New Year (quite literally from the turn of the year) that the skies cleared, to give us almost unbroken sunshine from dawn ’til dusk, and of course, with clear night skies, a drop in temperature. During the day the thermometer has been hitting the mid-teens in Centigrade (around 60°F), whilst at night it has just about reached freezing point – but certainly enough to give us ground frost in rural areas. Although wind has not really been a feature, airflow has been from the north, providing us with a real nip in the air. The upside of this is, however, that it provides our guys with very pleasant conditions for pruning.

Without doubt, the single most labourious and time consuming job that we face every year is the pruning. It usually extends (in all weathers) from November through until February or March – pretty much the moment at which our vines are ready to spring into life once again. It’s a never ending cycle!

Most people would complain after pruning a few roses or an odd tree or two in their garden, but imagine facing 11 hectares (25 acres) of tangled vine plants that all have to be cut carefully and accurately. I really can’t emphasise enough what a tough and thankless job this really is – without even mentioning inclement weather.

Just imagine for a second walking into our bodega vineyard featured in today’s photo and thinking, quite simply, where do I begin?! (And this photo represents only a hundred square metres or so)

Rias Baixas is certainly well-known for its use of the ‘pergola’ system of vine training. Overhead wires stretched between posts (often hewn from the local granite) looking rather like the staves on a page of music. As the vines grow and are trained along the wires then, inevitably, they are placed under a considerable amount of stress, mostly from the shear weight of the canopy.

These days the wires are made from galvanised steel or stainless steel, but even so, they are still prone to ageing and eventually need replacing…. so who you gonna call? The ‘wire man’ (alambrador) of course! The profession of alambrador is highly specialised and therefore the few, skilled artisans still using traditional methods, are always very much in demand. This is compounded by fact that their repair work is nearly always carried out in winter, when the vines are dormant and there is no dense vegetation to contend with. (During the summer months alambradors are usually only called in case of emergency, for example when a wire actually breaks, or perhaps a post is damaged by a tractor – as has happened to us a couple of times over the years).

To enable his access to our Cunchidos vineyard, our own guys had to move in swiftly and carry out the pruning and remove the old canopy in record time – we simply couldn’t afford to miss the appointment! Of course the only other handicap that we encounter in winter is the weather. Alambradors can’t really work very effectively in the rain, and so for the last few days they have been working on and off dodging the showers.

Perhaps the biggest disaster of the harvest (so far) was reserved for the penultimate night. Last night our ‘bodeguero’ (chief cellar hand) and pressing specialist fell, and slid down a flight of stairs! Fortunately he was not seriously injured, but after hospital tests, returned with his arm in a sling and restricted to a purely supervisory role.

Today will almost certainly be our final day, and another scorcher for working. The last day is always a bit frustrating as we spend hours with almost nothing to do (in the grape reception) and then we are hit with one final rush at the end of the day. After several hard days so far, it hardly seems fair on our fantastic cellar team, but unfortunately, that’s the way the cookie crumbles….

To keep the team occupied during these final hours of waiting, we deliberately leave one small corner of our ‘bodega’ vineyard unpicked, and so in these periods of calm they can take a bit of fresh air and enjoy the view! (see today’s photo of our small but happy team).

Tomorrow we may turn to the wine making, embarking on step two of the 2018 campaign.

Yet another beautifully sunny morning (which should now be the pattern until the end of the coming week). With temperatures now touching 30°C (86°F), it makes for very hot work – but better this than rain!

Unfortunately another minor incident occurred during the night when the very last pressing of the day suddenly stopped. However, with a 24 hour call-out service during harvest time, a technician quickly rectified the problem, and the last press of the day was completed (about 4am).

It transpires that Sunday turned out to be a completely manic day, and by late afternoon a short queue of vehicles had accumulated waiting to discharge their grapes. The heat was clearly taking it’s toll on everyone as the torrent of grapes continued throughout the evening without remission. By the end of the day we had by far exceeded our daily target, bringing the end of our 2018 harvest almost within touching distance. Perhaps one day more?

Meanwhile, downstairs in our lab, every single delivery of grapes was being analysed from the obligatory sample taken upon arrival. The results were better than we could have hoped (certainly after such poor spring weather). Of course the yield of juice per kilo was slightly less than normal, but it was the viscosity and balance of the juice that surprised us a little.

We arrived to work on Saturday morning under a beautiful clear blue sky, and according to the forecast – this should now continue well into next week and the end of the harvest (probably Tuesday).

In terms of kilos picked we are already more or less at the half way point, and apart from my big transport error on the first day, it has been comparatively smooth sailing. Of course there are always minor issues, the latest being the new, dynamic case washing machine being delivered without one of it’s main filters! Very annoying and inconvenient, but at least not terminal to the operation.

Indeed, the story of our latest addition made me laugh. Whilst we were getting excited about this modest new piece of kit, our neighbours down the road (at one of the regions Co-operatives), were just inaugurating their brand new 300,000 Euro grape reception! In a different league altogether… whilst we remain small, humble, but very beautiful.

Meanwhile back in the real world, grapes flowed in very nicely, and with our well-drilled team they were swept through the cellar in a very efficient and timely manner. (A backlog is the last thing that we require on a Saturday which is, as always, by far the busiest day of the week).

The view in today’s photo shows smoke – not heat haze, sea mist or cloud, but smoke. A fire somewhere in a forest nearby filled the afternoon air, but fortunately it would seem that it was quickly extinguished.

After a slightly fraught, late night yesterday, the new morning didn’t start so well. One of our famous Ocean mists had rolled in from the Atlantic leaving the whole area shrouded in a cold, damp cloud. We knew however, that the sun would eventually burn through, and by mid-morning it had done exactly that – picking was not delayed.

Today’s minor trauma was a puncture! The trailer on one of our tractors burst a tyre, but quite fortunately, just as it was arriving at the bodega and not in the middle of it’s journey. Of course we had the equipment on hand to make a relatively speedy repair, and so I guess it was hardly worth mentioning!

In the meantime the grapes continue to arrive, today in a steady flow, rather than yesterday’s late rush. Apart from yield that I mentioned yesterday, there is another attribute that we have noticed in this year’s fruit. There appears to be more variation in bunch sizes (related to individual vineyard sites), than in previous years, which is why we always pick plot-by-plot in a strict order. Obviously this variation is down purely to our Spring weather – cool, damp and hardly ideal for the flowering period. On a more positive note, the warm, dry conditions during August and September have probably yielded better quality than we had anticipated.

By the way, as I mentioned in my previous (special) post, the new case washing machine has had an amazing impact on our grape reception – cases can now be washed the moment that they are emptied into the presses. No more stacks of dirty cases, and no more hosepipes!

This is a special post simply to explain a significant delivery that arrived late last night. A few days ago I wrote about a window that we had made in the wall of our grape reception to accommodate a new piece of kit – well, the ‘kit’ finally arrived late last night (at 11pm, and much, much later than promised!). It is a new machine for washing the plastic cases that we use for picking, before we re-cycle them and send them out to be re-used.

Until now this was a job done by hand, with a hosepipe – it was slow and very labour intensive, especially when you consider that we have up t o 2,000 cases in circulation during harvest (and each one will be re-used several times).

When the machine arrived we were still busy, but we did not hesitate to connect it straight away, and press it into service. At that point there was still quite a backlog of cases to be washed, but within 20 minutes half of the mountain had disappeared, using two guys and leaving our cases almost spotlessly clean.

I am absolutely convinced that this will be a great investment, and will significantly streamline our operation. By next week we will probably be asking “why didn’t we buy this years ago?”

Well, after a spring and summer of variable and sometimes unexpected weather the 2018 harvest is finally upon us. Despite all these fluctuations the start date is pretty much as we anticipated – we had always predicted around the third week of September, and here we are, 19th September…

The great news is that the weather is being kind to us, in the morning there was a slight autumnal chill in the air, but with a clear blue sky. As the day progressed the temperature both inside and outside the bodega started to rise, and by midday the first grapes were already in the cellar. The familiar droning noise of the presses (that will continue unabated for the next 7 days or so), started to fill the air.

Unfortunately, owing to a slight (transport) miscalculation on my part the grapes did not arrive as quickly as we would have hoped, indeed the last grapes to arrive were rather late….. mea culpa! The good news is that they were all quite healthy, the only difference being that we have noticed that they are not yielding quite as much juice as we would normally expect when we press them – more on that as the days progress.

(Today’s video showing the first delivery of 2018 grapes is probably the shortest ever made – I really must learn how to control my new mobile phone!)

Now, I don’t profess to be any kind of meteorologist, but I do recognise when something’s not quite right. Here we are well into the month of June, and the weather here in northwest Spain is pretty poor to say the least. Daytime temperatures have hovered around the mid-teens °C (60-65°F), it’s grey and there has been a fair amount of rain. Our flowering period started reasonably well, in relatively dry conditions, but then it all went a bit down hill. Some flowering was complete before the rain, but for the rest we will have to wait to see what long-term effect that this cool, wet weather will have. I rather suspect that the flowering will prove to be uneven.

The odd part of this is that in some areas of northern Europe (across the UK, Belgium and Holland for example), they have been enjoying hot, balmy, summer conditions with temperatures into the mid 20’s, perhaps as much as 10°C more than our corner of Spain. This topsy-turvy weather has persisted for some time now (the whole of May) and to be honest I don’t really remember ever seeing this type of persistent weather reversal before.

Back in the UK, my friends still believe that I spend my time basking in a warm, sunny climate – clearly they have not visited Galicia!