Yet another bright sunny day here in Galicia (although this is never a given at this time of year, and can sometimes change in the blink of an eye). Today our picking team moved on to some of our smaller, more local vineyards here in the village of Barrantes. This move was soon evident as our grapes started to arrive much quicker than over the two previous days working in Castrelo. (Castrelo vineyard is actually the furthest from the bodega that we own, albeit still only about 10km).

We have noticed that the quality of the grapes appears to be fairly consistent from all locations this year, and actually quite high quality. Earlier in the summer we were not overly optimistic for this year’s harvest, but the three or four weeks of hot sunshine that extended from the end of July more or less until the end of August appears to have changed the outcome somewhat. Also, with a forecast for fine weather over the coming days it is likely that the quality that we have now will remain largely unaffected.

An unexpected feature of this year’s crop is the potential alcohol originating from the high concentration of fruit sugar. It would appear (albeit it still early days) that we could have a finished wine somewhere in the region of about 13% alc. Having said that, this level has become much more the ‘norm’ over recent years, but as our fruit still retains a good level of acidity, we are now more confident that we should be able to produce quite a good wine in 2024.

Over the day the flow of grapes remained steady, all moved with some efficiency through the cellar, and so from a harvest point of view our third day was quite uneventful.

When we opened our shutters today we were greeted by blue sky and sunshine, but the temperature was tempered by a fresh breeze. To be honest a breeze such as this is, quite naturally, welcomed by our picking team who spend long hours under the sun in our vineyards.

Tomorrow we will probably start work on the actual wine making process inside the bodega, which means that we have to enjoy our last day of relative ‘freedom’ before our workload effectively doubles (working inside and outside the bodega simultaneously). This is the most concentrated work period of the harvest, when fruit is still being gathered, and the first tanks of grape must require our attention. The double workload may well continue into the middle of next week when the final grapes are collected. From then on, our attention switches fully to inside and creating the very best wine can with the fruit that nature has provided.

Meanwhile, today we were visited by a local TV station – Television Salnés. Having already visited some larger ‘industrial-sized’ bodegas they were quite fascinated by our more hands-on, traditional approach. We actually take that as quite a compliment, as we always preach the gospel of traditional (sustainable) wine making processes. They were not only captivated by the bodega itself but also our history, being one of the founding bodegas of the D.O. Rias Baixas and also a family owned and managed business (actually more rare than you might think).

I sometimes have a feeling that each year is getting shorter, as our harvest seems to come around more and more quickly. (Probably more down to old age)! Today we start our picking under a slightly grey sky, but thankfully completely dry and with good weather forecast for the coming days.

This year we have a strong team of experienced people (following the recruitment problems that we experienced faced in 2023). Virtually from the break of day our pickers got to work in our Castrelo vineyard. Consistently one of our best, and also a site that has achieved full maturity and is now ready to be harvested. By late morning the first grapes were already arriving ready to be loaded into our presses, and by early evening the first tanks had been filled with fresh grape must (juice).

Our first taste of the 2024 must revealed, as always, a very intense, piercing fruit. At this stage the juice appears to have good viscosity and also a refreshing kick of acidity on the finish. Indeed, pretty much all the typical characteristics that we expect of the albariño varietal.

The day itself was pretty uneventful, apart from perhaps one light shower at the end of the day which was a little unexpected. With a steady flow of fruit that was quickly processed, we have taken our first step along the road of converting grapes into fine wine.

No sooner had I posted my words about the hot weather in August, than there was a slight downturn. That’s not to say that it started pouring with rain, but more that the high temperatures dropped by a few degrees. The reality is that we were left with levels more reminiscent of a Galician summer. The average dropped to nearer the mid 20’s C (mid 70’s F) – there has been more cloud (albeit not total cloud cover), and there was even one day of rain, which thankfully, was more or less just that single day. In effect, this actually helps to clean the fruit, and remove any layer of dust that might exist from the dry spell. The other factor that we have noticed are the much cooler nights. In summary, the very hot, dry spell lasted only some 3 or 4 weeks and may not have done quite as much work as we had hoped, in terms of ripening the fruit. Certainly the fruit that has been exposed directly to the sun is ripe, whereas that in the shade is very much on the borderline of being fully ripe.

Samples have been taken, and analysis has been made, that shows us exactly as we had suspected, some fruit would benefit from a bot more sun. The problem with this is, because of the unusual growing season (mostly cool, changeable weather followed by this short burst of summer heat), the acidity levels in some of our fruit is unusually low. As a result we will start picking selected vineyard sites this Thursday 12th September, which is actually very close to the date that I projected some three months ago after flowering.

I make no apologies for writing about the weather again, as, for all winemakers, this is perhaps the single most important factor in determining the quality of everything that they do. It’s much easier to make a poor wine from good grapes than it is making a good wine from poor quality grapes. Although not totally impossible, it is certainly much more of a challenge.

It was only a week or so I posted that the weather had been kind to us, and had virtually saved the flowering, just as things were starting to look ominous. Now I find myself complaining that we do really need some summer weather to kick in. Whilst parts of the world are baking (including the UK as I write this), Galicia has been quite chilly to say the least. One of the main factors behind this has been the wind, persistently blowing from the north, and adding a chill to even some of the sunniest days.

On Monday we did have at least one summer’s day, with blue skies and temperatures actually pushing 30°C (86°F), but that was very short lived. Yesterday, Tuesday, it was misty, damp and cold probably not even reaching 20°C (68°F). I suppose that this is part of the frustration, the continued cool temperatures and our summer never really getting any foothold as yet.

Having said all this, I did have a sneaking suspicion that in a few weeks I might actually be begging for some cooler weather… such is the way of our changing climate.

A couple of weeks ago the late spring weather was still pretty bleak, too much rain and unseasonably cool temperatures, really not the best conditions for flowering. Then, suddenly, almost in answer to our prayers, the rain stopped, the sun came out and we enjoyed just over a week of warm weather. It was (quite literally), the right weather at exactly the time that we needed it. We must have some friends in high places! Finally, the long and short of it is that the flowering was saved, and passed off better than we had dared hope just a week or two earlier.

This spell of fine weather came to a fairly abrupt end, and was marked by thunderstorms, albeit more in the south of our denomination (Condado and Rosal). Some of these storms were accompanied by our worst enemy – hail. Usually hailstorms are very localised, and despite today’s video having been shot the the Condado region, I have not heard any reports of damage to vineyards. The Salnés Valley did have rain, but luckily we seem to have escaped the dreaded hail (he says, touching wood!).

Now that flowering is finally over we can calculate, more or less, the timing of this year’s harvest. At this point in time we are looking at the very middle of September for our ’24 vendimia.

I am now really starting to think that the people who deny climate change must be made from the same mould as the flat-earthers (and should probably all be wearing protective hats made out out of tinfoil). Every day on our TV screens we see an increasing number of natural disasters, often in extremes. If it’s not catastrophic floods, then it’s severe drought, that can, in turn, leads to dreadful wild fires. All too often we witness destruction of property, the ruination of livelihoods and nearly always death.

I should say that here in Galicia we have been lucky (so far, and I am touching wood as I write this). Whilst we have witnessed unseasonal weather, heat when it should be cold and vice-versa, we have still, somehow, managed to escape largely unscathed. Of course, being fruit farmers, these unpredictable conditions do cause us problems and can easily interfere with the growth and development cycle of our grapes. Today, for example, we are already into the third week of May and the outside temperature is barely into double figures (°C). Apart from that, we have rain showers stopping and starting every 10-15 minutes. Also, don’t forget, that it is also the time of year for flowering and so, quite obviously, these are far from ideal conditions. We will simply have to wait to see what transpires over the next week or two.

To change the subject completely, today’s picture shows one of the world’s most ‘over-constructed’ car parks, built by our local council (almost in the middle of nowhere)! The original piece of waste ground was already an area of concrete, and now, after about 18 months work by a team of perhaps ten or a dozen workers, it is now simply a new piece of concrete with lines painted on it! Admittedly they have added lighting, but I feel quite strongly that the amount of time and money invested on this project (paid by our local taxes) has been largely wasted. Rant over for today!

After spending six months resting on their lees the first wines of 2023 are now being prepared. However, as we still have good stocks of our (fantastic) 2022 Castro Martin Family Estate, the tanks which have been selected for this special wine will not be touched, perhaps for another few months at least.

Although we only make a mono-varietal albariño wine not every tank is identical, there are many variations, usually dependant upon the original source vineyard used to make each tank. For this reason, we always select a number of tanks according to their different attributes – flavours, textures, structure, balance etc.

I always equate this process to cooking, taking a number of ‘ingredients’ and trying to imagine how they might compliment each other when put together, but even more importantly, how they might evolve over time. There is a lot of trial and error involved, based almost entirely on the taste of each sample blend that we try. Once the final mix is decided, it is then down to the ‘simple’ task of moving thousands of litres of wine around the cellar, akin to one huge game of chess!

Of course, these wines need to be racked into clean tanks anyway (to separate the clean wine from their lees), and so by blending at this moment we can actually kill two birds with one stone (and thus minimise the number of times that each tank is moved). In some cases, these wines may never be moved again until they are actually bottled.

To be honest, blending is one of my favourite jobs of the year as there is always a great deal of satisfaction in tasting the ‘finished’ wines (after allowing some days for the individual component wines to marry together completely).

Meanwhile, in the vineyards, it is time to grub up and replant a few vines. These may have come to the end of their working life or perhaps simply started to die off, which sometimes happens. The weather over the last three weeks or so has been must better, with dry, sunny days many of which were tempered a little by cold easterly or northerly winds. Unfortunately, this is set to change in the coming days as yet more rain looms just over the horizon.

This morning I was in the vineyard behind our Bodega, mostly to check on the progress of our vines. The rain has finally stopped, and the forecast tells us that the week ahead should be bright and dry… we shall see! After such a prolonged period of cold, wet weather we have just made our first, precautionary, treatment of the year, a small dose of sulphur. Clearly, spraying ‘contact’ treatments in wet conditions would be of no use, and a complete waste of both time and money. Now we simply have to take full advantage of the dry conditions. Anyway, it seems that the plants are healthy and that growth is already quite rapid (a combination of sun and moisture in the soil).

Whilst I was surveying the vines I caught sight of our young oak trees, which 12 or 13 years after being mere acorns, have now grown into something much more substantial (see today’s photo). You may not recall, but the significance of these young trees (to us at least) is that the acorns themselves were gathered from the white oaks newly planted at the 9/11 memorial in New York. I guess that, strictly speaking, we maybe should not have imported acorns in our luggage, but to be honest, we are now quite happy that we did.

We have now just passed the Spring Equinox and this weekend it will be time to change our clocks to ‘summertime’.

Having said that, as the Easter weekend approaches, our spring weather continues to be erratic. After a couple of day of warm sunshine, we have now returned to our more usual grey skies, showers and much colder temperatures. The forecast for this holiday week is for rain and more cold weather, which is not great for local tourism as some visitors may well be discouraged from even coming at all.

Of course, Galicia is known as being a part of ‘Green Spain’ where we have far more rainfall than other regions. I truly believe that many foreign visitors to Spain (and also this verdant corner of Spain) come with the preconception that Spain is always hot, that it is the land of “sun, sand and sangria”. As I look out of my window at this moment, I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth!

From a wine producing point of view, our hope now is that this combination of very cold, wet conditions does not produce hail, as the new buds of this year’s new growth have already appeared in our vineyards. As always, we simply have to keep our fingers crossed.