The weather this December has been a changeable to say the least – some weather typical, some not quite so typical. The typical part is that it has been quite a wet month. Indeed, as I write this post we are being lashed by strong winds and driving rain, it really is very wild and unpleasant outside. In contrast to this a lot of the month has been quite mild, whereby, apart from one cold snap at the beginning of the month (with only one night of frost that I can recall), temperatures have remained mostly in the mid-teens °C, ranging largely between 13° and 17°C (55° to 63°F). This is actually a bit of a relief, because the usual Galician combination of cold and humidity can be really bone-chilling.

There have been some dry days, and a few sunny days, but these have been few and far between, and so our seasonal work in the vineyards has been tough to say the least.

Our Christmas orders of wine are all wrapped and distributed, and so apart from a few odd cases here and there, the last week before the holidays is likely to be quite quiet. Time to catch up on some admin and other chores. Perhaps tomorrow, we might make one final tasting of our tanks of 2022 wine before the end of the year, just to see how they are progressing. I have high expectations!

The last two winters in Galicia were both unusually dry. Our region is know as ‘Green Spain’ for a reason, and of course, this this usually relies a great deal on the amount of rainfall that we experience during the winter months.

After a hot, dry summer in 2022, when the ground was unusually parched and the risk of forest fires was high, it appears now that the month of November is much more typical of our Galician climate. A large part of the month has been wet, with long periods of persistent rainfall (actually just what we need for replenishing our diminished water table). At least we have been lucky that the rain is evenly distributed and that we have not really suffered the sudden, torrential downpours that have created such catastrophic flash-flooding in other parts of the world.

One of the other factors in the midst of all of this, is that temperatures have remained higher than we would normally expect. For the last few weeks the thermometer has barely fallen below 16/17°C (60-62°F), which is probably 3 or 4°C higher than we would normally expect at this time of year. The downside of higher temperatures is that it delays the start of our pruning. We usually wait for colder temperatures when leaves start to fall and the sap inside the plant also recedes for the winter leaving dry, dead wood for cutting.

For our final day the sun was beating down (as it has been for the last couple of days, with a temperature of around 29°C / 84°F). With one final vineyard left to finish we hoped that this would be a short day. As I have mentioned in previous years we have to wait until the final grapes are collected before we can load the presses. The weight of fruit has to be distributed evenly as our presses cannot function if they are only half full. Again, this would mean another waiting game.

At about 5.30pm the last grapes were in, calculations were made, and presses were loaded. All was going well until about 8.30pm when there was a very loud bang and one of the presses stopped in the middle of its cycle. Clearly, from the sound alone, we could deduce that this was probably a mechanical failure rather than an electronic issue. We were not wrong.

The press had only just started it’s 75 minute cycle, and was stuck, leaving us unable to rotate the cylindrical tank of the press in any direction. This left us with a dilemma. If the press could not be repaired then how could we remove the partially crushed fruit and move it to the other press? We were considering all options, including taking our shoes and socks off and using ancient methods!

In short, after more than two hours, the engineers were able to make at least a temporary repair, this meant that at least the cycle could be completed and we could keep our feet dry (at least for this harvest)!

Apart from this final drama, the 2022 vintage has probably been slightly better than we anticipated, and after a very dry summer, our yields (litres/kilo) were more or less normal. Now we move on to the winemaking (albeit this is already well under way).

On Sunday, as we moved into the last few vineyards the sun was beating down on us, with the temperature hovering around 30°C (86°F). To be honest it was quite a slow day, with just a little racking in the morning, and then waiting for pallets of grapes to arrive in the afternoon. In the cellar there is a lot of waiting involved, but regrettably we don’t have too much choice. Our objective is simply to get all the grapes in so that we can do a final count, and know exactly how many kilos we will have in order that we can calculate the final number of tanks that we will need, and how best the must can be distributed between them. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds.

Lunch at harvest time is a very serious business. Our picking team usually stop for between an hour or an hour and a half for lunch, during which time (on very hot days) they try to find somewhere cool to eat – in the case of today’s photo, under a tree. As you can see they are also very resourceful, building a makeshift table out of harvest cases and a couple of plastic pallets. Unfortunately, the sommelier was just out of shot when I took the picture!

We are now getting near to the end of our 2022 harvest, which has not been without it’s difficulties. Apart from the weather (when we missed two days of picking), there has also been an acute shortage of people for picking. Some of our team work two jobs during the harvest. Quite a number are ‘mariscadoras’, who work on our local beaches collecting our famous local shellfish from the sand (difficult and back breaking work). They always collect this seafood early in the morning, and only when the tide permits, meaning that some days they are available, and other days they are not. The hardy few do actually pick for us after they have finished working in the sea. The best attribute of these mariscadoras is that they are always very hard working and can be trusted without supervision required (except to point them in the right direction).

In our final days we are moving between some of our own, smaller vineyard locations, but also picking the grapes of some of our grape suppliers. These days, picking the grapes of our suppliers is becoming more and more common, as not only do they have a problem finding pickers, but also some of the growers themselves are getting a bit older. The upside of this is that these older growers really take great care of their vines, and also, the vines themselves are nearly always very mature and produce great fruit.

We finished the day in our bodega vineyard, which as the name suggests, surrounds our building. This means that the grapes are delivered from vine to press in record time. As we did not collect fruit from any other location it meant that we enjoyed a relatively early finish, especially for a Saturday. Hopefully, in another day or so, we should be completely finished – probably our longest evert harvest!

When we study the weather forecast for the coming days it appears that the rain is now behind us, and that we will have good conditions to complete our harvest over the next two or three days. We shall see…

Seeding the tanks started today, whilst the harvest continued in the vineyards. Our cellar hand Fran who normally helps us starting the fermentations was fully occupied working on the presses, and so the task was left to Angela and myself – not really a big deal, as we have a few years of experience between us!

The must that we are working with this year is actual a slightly darker than usual, a pale gold colour, probably owing the the extreme heat this summer. The other significant factor being that the level of acidity is slightly lower this year. Being located in the Salnés Valley, in the north of the denomination, we are usually associated with a bright acidity, which, when the wine is very young, can be a little ‘edgy’ – sharp, as some people describe it. This year we might arrive with a wine ready to drink straight out of the press!

Seeding was also a little slower than normal as many pumps and hoses are being used on the harvest. The pumps and hoses used for seeding cannot be shared as the other musts can be contaminated by yeast before it is actually intended. This is very dangerous in the wine making process. Consequently the seeding process for the day was not completed until 10pm, at a time when the grape reception is working at full tilt.

Today’s photo shows a large 300 litre container used for preparing the yeast – when grape must is added the reaction is quite impressive. Starbucks would be envious of this foam!

As you may have gathered from my missing posts, our harvest was suspended for two days owing to “bad” weather. As I think I mentioned a couple of days ago, weather forecasts (here on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean), can be especially inaccurate – and so it proved to be. The forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday was for a storm (the tail of a Hurricane), or at the very least, a lot of rain and wind. OK, so it rained during the night on Monday, and was still a little damp on Tuesday morning, but by about midday the sun was shining, and no doubt the fresh breeze had dried any rain on our fruit. In the end, we could have picked, albeit with a slightly delayed start, losing only a couple of hours. It was the same on Wednesday, except with almost no rain at all – dark grey sky in the morning, but with sun by lunchtime…. so much for this famous storm, and so much for the weather forecasts! Of course, the only positive from the inaccurate forecasts is that there was not too much damage to our fruit (water from heavy rain will be sucked up by the plant, and have the effect of diluting the pulp/juice within the grape).

Thursday was much brighter, and with a better forecast (fingers crossed!), and so picking started at the normal hour of 9.30am. Meanwhile inside the bodega, we have been working – indeed, all the musts collected so far have been racked into clean tanks and we will start seeding tomorrow. 2022 is going to be a slightly more complicated year in that we will be starting fermentations and continuing our harvest at the same time. Normally they are more or less concurrent, with one following on from the other.

In the end Thursday’s forecast was largely correct….until about 7pm! Just as our picking was drawing to a close for the day, the heavens opened, and it rained heavily for about 15 minutes. Our picking team were left dashing for cover, as the only thing that was protected from the rain were our grapes (with plastic covers over the pallets). Fortunately, apart from a few damp shirts no lasting damage was done and within an hour and a half we were enjoying a spectacular sunset….

More or less as predicted the day started under grey skies, and just a little light rain. Fortunately this was barely enough to penetrate the canopy, and stopped completely after about half an hour. With a very slight delay our picking team swung into action (although we made a decision to only harvest from our own vineyards) meaning that other grape suppliers would not be asked to pick today. In this way we can maintain complete control, in terms of the actual volume that we pick. The reason for this is simple mathematics, we need to calculate the weights required to ensure that our presses can accommodate every kilo collected.

The good news is that, so far, we have some very high quality grape must to work with – fresh, fruity, with good body and our usual bright acidity. A number of tanks have been racked and so fermentations can be started in a day or two.

Meanwhile in the vineyard, the anticipated rain finally arrived at 5.30pm. Picking was halted for the day, all grapes were covered and delivered by truck to the cellar. By 9.30 pm the final press had been loaded, and we were thankful to enjoy a comparatively short working day.

(By the way, todays photo shows the final part of the racking process – the clean must on top, and the organic residues at the bottom).

Well, the day started bright and sunny as we would always wish, but there is now rain looming just over the horizon. We really need to gather as much fruit as we can, despite the shortage of people.

For our own picking team it was a day of movement, finishing in one location and then moving on to the next, ending the day in our vineyard surrounding the bodega. Of course the advantage of working on ‘home turf’ is that no sooner are the grapes picked that they are delivered and transferred straight into the presses. It’s a very fast process. (Unfortunately not all grape deliveries are so quick).

Today, we also started work inside the cellar, racking the first tanks after a period of cold settling (when all the dust and other deposits sink to the bottom of the tank). After this process the cold grape must, now in clean tanks, will be allowed to recover a slightly higher temperature before we can start the fermentation. Although we prefer to use a slow, cool fermentation, the wine still has to reach 13 or 14°C before it can be seeded with yeast, otherwise the yeast simply will not survive.

Today’s machinery saga was actually not inside the bodega itself, but rather one of our tractors working in the vineyard. We have a forklift attachment on the back of the tractor that we use for collecting pallets to load onto the truck. Until today, when the clutch started to slip! For the time being we will have to use a different tractor until the other can be repaired.

Today we start the 40th harvest in our current wine cellar. The bodega, completed by the visionary entrepreneur Domingo Martin in October 1981, collected its first harvest in 1982. (The Regulatory Council of the D.O. Rias Baixas was not established until 1988). Bodegas Castro Martin is one of the founding members of the D.O.

My first comment regarding this year’s harvest is, inevitably, about the weather. After two months of dry, arid conditions, we now find ourselves dodging the showers. Over the last few days there have been some fairly hefty downpours, which in the first instance (as I explained in my last post), were quite welcome, and no bad thing. The problem is that the wet weather now seems to be hanging around, and so for picking purposes, this can be quite tricky.

At first light today we were quite optimistic as there was plenty of blue sky in evidence. However, as the morning progressed, so the clouds started to gather, and at times, almost looked a bit threatening.

With one eye on the weather, the first grapes arrived mid-afternoon (by which time the sun had returned). As in previous years the 20kg baskets of grapes from our own vineyards arrived by truck, already palletised in the vineyard. This is very much the modern trend for delivery to wine cellars, which admittedly does save quite a lot of physical work in the bodega – offloading individual cases by hand.