Summer Harvest?

I mentioned a week or two ago that our flowering had been extraordinarily early this year, and the recent weather has only served to perpetuate the problem - daytime temperatures of mid to upper 20's (75° - 85°F). Using the traditional calculation often used by growers, 100 days between the time of flowering and the harvest, this would, in theory at least, give us a date for picking of week commencing 23rd August.... Looks like there might be less sunbathing time this summer!

Althought we 'enjoyed' a wet winter here in Galicia, and the water tables were well replenished, we have not had any rain at all for some weeks now and certainly surface soils are getting pretty dehydrated. We will therefore have to take this into account when we start our work on the canopies. Certainly 'green harvesting' will not cause any problems, and indeed, should only serve to enhance the quality of the fruit left on the vines, but leaf thinning is a different matter.

Leaves, as we know, are the powerhouse of any plant and provide all the sugar and nutrients required for growth. During the summer we actively remove a percentage of the leaves, not only to provide the fruit with better exposure to the sun, but also to ensure that not all the energy is consumed by thick foliage. The trick is to find the correct density of leaves, and the exact amount that we eventually remove will therefore be determined by how our weather evolves over the next couple of months.

(Very) early flowering

Angela surveying the flowering

Around this time last year I seem to recall posting a picture of some highly coloured blooms as a representation of the flowering in our vineyards, and this year is no exception. Nothing to do with our vines, but at least a bit more colourful to look at!

On a more serious note, we have an extremely early flowering just starting here in Galicia. The temperature as I write is about 27°C (just over 80°F) and the forecast for the rest of the week is set fair, so all looks quite rosey in our garden (if you'll pardon the pun). The number of bunches per vine appears to indicate a big harvest, albeit that this is no guarantee of real quality, and so I rather suspect that there will be a good deal of 'green harvesting' during the summer months.

Naturally this early flowering (probably at least two weeks earlier than normal), will mean that the 2011 harvest will be premature too. If the fine weather continues I would estimate picking at the very beginning of September, similar to our 2006 vintage. Only time will tell.

Black sheep of the Castro Martin family

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we have been keeping sheep in our Pazo vineyard, which is proving to be a much more efficient, not to mention ecologically friendly, method of keeping the grass under control. Absolutely no use of herbicides (as always), and also greatly reduced fuel use by our tractors - normally employed in summer to cut the grass.

About a week ago Angela's sister visited the sheep to give them a few treats (fresh oats and a little bread), and was horrified to discover that a couple of cats had invaded the sheep's small shelter..... until she looked more closely.

It turns out that they were not cats at all, but instead were a couple of completely black lambs. Clearly their mother had spent too much time in the sun!

Early warning system

Before you start thinking that the roof of our bodega is bristling with antennae and satellite dishes, that is not exactly what I mean. Yes, I do have a small Oregon Scientific weather station sitting on my desk, but I am actually talking about something much more low-tech, but nonetheless effective..... rose bushes.

I am convinced that the vast majority of people believe that roses are present in many a vineyard simply to add a splash of colour, but perhaps I should explain that this is not the only reason. Of course it's true they do add a touch of colour, but their function is actually much more important - they act as an early warning system to the vigneron.

Rose bushes are susceptible to many of the same diseases as grape vines, and in most cases are actually more sensitive. The indicators for oidium, mildew etc are more likely to appear on the roses before our vines become infected, and we can therefore leap into action with the appropriate preventative measures pretty much before the problem takes hold.

The picture above was taken a day or so ago in our El Pazo vineyard - not only do you notice the advanced years of our vines, but you can also clearly see the vigorous growth for the time of year. Could be another early harvest.

What the flock?

This winter's best kept secret at Castro Martin.... sheep! We have decided to kill two or three birds with one stone by taking advantage of the fact that our 'Pazo' vineyard is completely enclosed by walls. We have been grazing a flock of sheep for the last few months.

Not only does this help to keep the grass down, but it also help to provide additional nutrients to the soil (excuse me if I do not elaborate on the detail). Finally, there is the subsistence side of the equation - people here keep cattle to eat, and not simply as pets. Now, being a city boy myself I am not so sure about this, I am more accustomed to getting my lamb from the butcher and not from a field at the end of my garden!

In the course of the last month or two nature has also taken its course, and we now have a few new offspring hopping around the place. Perhaps if we ever fall on hard times, and the wine business takes a dive, we could become sheep farmers instead?

I think not.

Construcciones Castro Martin S.L.

Yet more building work..... if it isn't laying concrete or adding a new roof, then it might be putting up a new cattle shed - you can't say that our work is not varied!

Yes, this week our guys are busy building yet another shed, but this time in the corner of our Pazo vineyard. It's not for keeping our tractor, but it is for housing our new grass cutting equipment - a small flock of sheep.

I often make mention of the fact that we do not use herbicides, preferring instead to let the grass grow between the vines and cutting it manually (keeping our practices as eco-friendly as possible). Now we are taking this a step further, by introducing a handful of sheep to graze under the pergolas during the winter months. Not only will this help to keep the grass down, but it may also add a little natural fertilizer to the soil!

There are other bodegas that already do this, but then one of the fundamental pre-requisites is that you need a fully enclosed vineyard. Naturally our 'Pazo' vineyard qualifies admirably and is completely 'walled' as its name implies (similar to 'Clos' in French), making a perfect pasture. There is another bodega, local to us, that uses geese instead of sheep, and this seems to work pretty well, so we shall see....

No doubt I will keep you informed as to how this experiment works out.

Albariño going global?

New plantings are springing up around the world

Having said a couple of days ago that Albariño is in decline, the press are now dramatically declaring that it is "on the brinkof International Stardom"!

It would seem that plantings have been made in a couple of new areas, in different countries, which whilst being quite exciting, hardly constitutes an explosion of new plantings as implied in the article.

We already know that albariño is being grown in California, Oregon and Australia to name but a few, but it is now apparently taking root in Corbières and the Languedoc of south-west France. In Corbières these new plantings will not produce until around 2015, and the growers in question have suggested that their new wine could possibly be blended with other varietals such as viognier, grenache gris and grenache blanc. Hmmm, very interesting.

Perhaps another, even more interesting new area is to be found in the Lebanon - not the Bekaa Valley, but in a different area, unfortunately not specified in the article.

To be honest I do not consider this as competition to albariño from Rias Baixas, mainly owing to the fact that the different soils and climates will inevitably give these new wines their own distinctive character. On the contrary, I will actually be very keen to taste some of these new examples when they eventually come to market.

Finally, the article included one very interesting comment that I would like to quote as follows: "We are seeing a trend with consumers at the moment towards lighter, fresh and aromatic styles - albariño clearly fits this profile".

I couldn't agree more.....

Autumn Leaves

If you look at today's photo, you might have a bit of a problem working it out - the reason is that I have deliberately loaded it upside-down!

It just stuck me when I took this snap, that there were almost as many leaves on the ground as there were on the pergolas overhead. The reason? Well, we believe quite simply that quality is created in the vineyard, and so during the summer months we spend a lot of time working on the canopy, making sure that our fruit gets the best possible exposure. Not only that, but we have also done some 'green harvesting' this year, which, as I'm sure you know, means removing any excess bunches from the vine before they mature. Of course this simply has the effect of concentrating all the efforts of the plant into the optimum number of bunches.

The hot weather continues, there is no rain on the horizon, and the harvest looms ever closer.

Wilting in the heat

Wouldn't argriculture be boring if our weather was predictable? There's a sort of irony in the fact that just a couple of months ago Galicia was awash with rain, whereas now......

Certainly for large parts of June and nearly the whole of July, we have barely seen a drop of rain. With the exception of a thunderstorm at the beginning of the month, July can only be described as hot and windy. For several weeks now, daytime temperatures have been pushing 30°C (86°F) or more, and have only been moderated by winds blowing from the north and the west. The problem is that whilst the breeze is very welcome, it is also very drying and our vineyards are just starting to suffer as a result. The roof of the canopy is showing signs of stress - leaves are wilting a little and are not as verdant as they might normally be in our temperate maritime climate.

For the fruit to evolve properly, we could actually do with a few days of rain just to put us back on track - imagine, an Englishman, praying for a bit of rain!

Slashin' da grass

The grass cutting season is upon us, or should I say the grass slashing season. It was only yesterday when I discovered that the piece of machinery that we use to 'cut' grass in the vineyards, technically, is known as a grass slasher. It's fairly logical really....

The piece of kit (similar to the photo above) that we attach to the back of our tractors does not actually have blades, and therefore does not cut. In reality it uses some fairly heavy duty steel chains that rotate at high speed horizontal to the ground, like a giant strimmer that removes pretty much anything in its path. Of course this includes any small stones or rocks laying on the ground which are ejected like rifle bullets, so you really don't want to be standing near this machine when it's working!

Obviously grass 'slashing' is a time consuming chore, but for our vineyards we think that it is a much better option than herbicide.

We have grapes!

Well, grapes might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but we have the makings of some grapes in our vineyards. I would like to tell you that the flowering passed off perfectly, but not quite..... Despite the weather improving hugely from the cool, damp conditions that we had been experiencing, we still had one day of rain in the middle of the flowering - not the most ideal day for pollination.

The one thing that I can say with some degree of certainty is that there are less bunches than last year, so we should expect a smaller harvest. Obviously it would be difficult to predict exactly how much smaller, as there are still so many unknown factors to take into account that will help complete the picture over the coming months - as usual we will just have to sit back and pray.

In addition to the potential size of the havest, we can also work out the approximate date - using the calculation of 100 days from flowering, we should now anticipate a start date towards the end of September. No doubt this will be upon us before we know it, and I will be sitting here writing another vintage report.

Doesn't time fly when your having fun?

Timber 2 - the sequel

So the koala's of Galicia will have to look for a new home as part of their habitat is removed......

You may recall that back in January, following a storm, a large Eucalyptus tree was felled, and unfortunately landed in our Bodega vineyard. At the time our neighbour promised that she would move the tree line further away from our fence, and I now happy to tell you that this work has just been completed. Indeed, it was completed much, much quicker than I imagined.

On Thursday morning Angela and I went to talk to the tree fellers (actually there were only two of them - old joke), as they had more or less just started their work. This morning I thought that I would bring my camera to work to capture an action shot of falling trees, and men in hard hats. Not to be - the work had already been completed, so now I just have a photo of a swathe of land without trees, which is not quite as exciting.

The good news is that this means that the vines in the lower section of the vineyard should now enjoy much better exposure to the sun, and also may have slightly less competition when it comes to finding water in the soil. We shall see.

Of course, the Eucalyptus tree is not a native of Galicia, but I think was planted extensively in the early 1980's to supply wood pulp to the local paper industry. On the plus side (for the paper people at least) it is a fast growing species, whilst on the down side it's dense plantations are prone to catch fire and burn very easily - our region has suffered from some fairly horrific forest fires as a result.

One cycle ends, another begins

One of the other wine blogs that I follow is that of my friend Kirk at Sandihurst Wines in New Zealand (see my list of Links). A day or two ago they picked their first grapes of the new harvest; admittedly these were Pinot Noir and not a white varietal, but they were still grapes to be used for making wine.

Anyway, my point is that just as their vines are coming to the end of their cycle, ours are just starting to spring to life. I can assure you that the above photo was taken this morning - having compared it to photos from previous years, the new shoots all look pretty much the same. The really interesting part is comparing the date on which the photos were taken each year.

In this new digital age our cameras record all the metadata that we could possibly wish for, including (if you have the attachment), the exact GPS location of where the picture was taken. Hardly useful when you're only standing outside the back of your own bodega, but I guess that if you were on a photoshoot in the Namib desert then it might be worth the extra investment. In fact, just about the only information that it doesn't give is what the photographer had for breakfast!

So, studying the dates of photos taken in recent vintages it would appear that in 2010 we are just a little behind schedule - perhaps a week later than recent vintages, and almost two weeks later than in 2007. This could result in a harvest towards the end of September, but we will probably have a more accurate forecast once the flowering takes place.

Fire in the vineyard!

Despite all the rain than we have endured this winter it does seem a bit odd that we still have to apply for a licence to burn vine cuttings, especially whilst the ground is still completely sodden.

However, it is still quite pleasant to drive around in the bright winter sunshine and notice the hillsides dotted with small plumes of smoke from the numerous bonfires - a very typical winter scene here in wine country.

As I arrived in the vineyard today, even before I had the chance to open my mouth and make the usual quip, one of our guys asked “Did you remember to bring the salchichas (sausages)?”. Joking apart, there are actually many people that save their vine cuttings to burn on summer barbeques, believing that it imparts a bit of extra flavour to their chicken wings. Whilst this is very probably true, the amount of addition effort it would take to gather all the cuttings together, for us would simply be a waste of valuable man hours.

Besides, who needs a barbeque? Having just returned from the vineyard, I smell rather like a smoked chicken wing myself!

One for the romantics?

It has always puzzled me as to why people think that running a small hotel, or a restaurant, is a romantic idea. I can honestly tell you, from my previous life in hotel management (many, many years ago), that it is not. It is tough, physically demanding work - long hours on your feet, working evenings and weekends, quite logically, when all around you are relaxing....

So often I hear stories of people coming into money, either through inheritance, or perhaps a redundancy package, who immediately have the idea of speculating in the hospitality industry. Of course there are those who make a success of it, but for others, perhaps with no prior experience, well, they often fall by the wayside and lose their investment. Who is it once said - "The best way to make a small fortune in the restaurant business, is to start off with a very large fortune"!

I guess the same could be said of the wine industry, in that owning your own vineyard and making a bottle with your own name on it, is a very attractive idea - but please be warned, to do it on a commercial scale is much more than just a hobby, and to do it well takes both a lot of care and experience.

Over the weekend I saw a rather unusual story in the Daily Telegraph that caught my eye. A vineyard for sale near the city of Bath, in the south west of England. They did not state the exact size of the vineyard itself, but mentioned that for an investment of a mere £20,000 the new owner could, in a good year, produce up to 1,000 bottles of Riesling.

The estate agents handling the deal went on to say "we have been surprised by the amount of interest generated by wine enthusiasts who want to grow their own grapes and make their own wine". Knowing the vagaries of the English climate, allow me to be the first to wish them good luck in their new venture, whoever they may be.

Post Script: Since I first made this post a new article has appeared in a similar vein.

Timberrrrrrrr.......!

Ever since we planted our 'Bodega' vineyard several years ago we have been in discussion, or perhaps even dispute, with our neighbour regarding their adjoining forest of eucalyptus. Apparently, by law (not that this means very much), there has to be a gap between the party fence and the first line of trees - in this case there is not.

The consequence is that we have a very sheltered corner of the vineyard, where not only is there little sun, but also, owing to the proximity of the root system, our vines are well and truly starved of any water. Hence very few grapes in this area.

As I think I mentioned before, we have had a huge amount of rain this winter and as a result the soil is saturated and the shallow roots of the eucalyptus have been undermined. The outcome? We now have a horizontal tree in our vineyard, breaking posts and bringing down the wires with it. Fortunately there was no one pruning in this area at the time!

Our neighbour has been very apologetic, and has now promised to repair the damaged fence and pergolas, and also to cut back the tree line. I will not hold my breath......

The first frosts of winter

For the whole of November and the first half of December the sun never appeared in Ribadumia, instead only grey sky and a lot of rain.

Apparently this had something to do with the wind direction. Blowing from just off the coast of West Africa, these extra mild winds were able to carry a lot more moisture than the more customary, cooler winds from the north. True, the temperatures have been mild, rarely dipping below 9 or 10°C (even at night), but boy has it been wet, even by Galician standards.

It was actually the 14th December before we witnessed the first clear skies and touch of frost, but only in very sheltered, low-lying areas. This of course provides the ideal weather for pruning which is now under way in our vineyards. As I know I have written many times before, far better to be pruning in a bit of mild winter sunshine, than with rain beating down in your face!

It would appear that many other parts of Europe have also been affected by this cold snap, with many countries suffering heavy snow and freezing temperatures. I guess we should at least be thankful that we have not been stranded on a train in the Channel tunnel for hours on end, like some other poor souls over the weekend...... What a nightmare!

It's sample time

This week is like the proverbial 'lull before the storm'. We think we have everything in the bodega prepared, even the arrangements for an emergency generator have been made. Only a bit of last minute cleaning remains.

Meanwhile Angela is out and about, gathering grape samples, not only from our own vineyards, but also from those of our suppliers. These samples will be carefully analysed as we wait for the optimum moment to start picking. Each of our vineyards will then be sub-divided into plots, and we will gather grapes plot-by-plot in strict order of ripeness.

As usual at this time of year, I am glued to my computer screen watching the weather (well, I am British after all!) However, it goes without saying that this also plays a hugely important part in our harvest planning too.

I have also taken the oportunity to nip out with my camera to take a few vineyard shots before the serious work begins.

Flowering

Now, I am never quite sure what people expect to see when they visit our vineyards at flowering time. If they anticipate seeing a display of colour to rival the famous Chelsea flower show, then they should simply stay at home! Indeed, I remember my own reaction many many years ago, thinking to myself 'but where are all the flowers?' (saying nothing to the French vigneron who was showing me for fear of seeming ignorant).

I think that I have probably incorporated photos of the actual flowering on this blog in previous years, but quite honestly there's not really that much to see, and it makes a rather boring header for the top of my page.

The important thing is that we have the right weather, and I'm pleased to report that the last week has been sensational - it would appear that the flowering for 2009 has passed off successfully. In the period leading up to this the weather had been cool and damp and we feared that we could have a poor flowering that would inevitably lead to uneven bunches. The French call this millerandage, but I am not sure if the Spanish actually have a word for it. When I looked it up in my LexiVin the translation was 'granos muy pequeños', which quite literally means very small berries.... hardly an apt description.

I have not posted for the last week or so, as I have been away in the UK. Now, I am not saying that the English are perfect drivers, but I was very soon reminded that I was 'home' again when after only 400 metres of my journey to work, the first would-be Fernando Alonso pulled out of a side road in front of me without even looking. Having said that, I am often shocked that many of the fast and aggressive drivers here in Spain are actually the young women! Sorry girls......

Relaxing on the lees

As you can see from the photo the bodega is a regular hive of activity at this time of year (not). Now that the Christmas rush is over it leaves little to do in the bodega, and so we turn our attention back to the vineyards and the back breaking job of pruning, which now takes precedence over all other work.

Inside the cellar the only activity is in the tanks, as the new vintage rests quietly on it's lees, gathering nuances of flavour and depth of character from the spent yeast cells at the bottom of each tank. My impression is that our 2008 wine will really benefit from this process as the wine is still quite 'green' at this point in it's life. Given this extra time the wine will mellow and lose some of it's 'angular' structure - it will also gain greater depth as well as additional complexity. Only time will tell, as we taste each tank on a regular basis over the coming months.

So, whilst the wine relaxes in the cellar, outdoors our young team are working hard in the vineyards as they rush around brandishing their pruning shears. Fortunately, as I write this post, the weather for pruning is perfect, clear blue skies, with just a hint of frost in the air. Over the coming weeks the vineyards will be dotted with small plumes of smoke as the vine cuttings are systematically burned - a typical autumn scene in most wine producing areas. To be honest, weather wise, this is probably my favourite time of year, I guess that the cold, clear days remind me of England!

Let's just hope that the sun continues to shine for a while at least. There is nothing more miserable than trying to prune with the rain falling directly in your face and water running up your sleeves (don't forget that with our pergola system of vine training pruning is actually overhead, looking up at the heavens!)