Rain at last!

It's probably quite fitting that one of my last few posts on Blogger (we will hopefully launch our completely new, all singing, all dancing website later this week), should be about the weather.

So far, the month of July has been cool and cloudy. Lots of overcast days, odd spots of sunshine, but also quite a lot of mist and drizzle - just in time for the Galician tourist season that starts to gather momentum at the beginning of the month. The significant point is that, despite the drizzle that we have had, it's hardly been enough to penetrate the canopy in our vineyards, and the soil has remained mostly dry.

Thursday and Friday of this last week, has however, provided us with the first real rain since February/March. Not torrential rain, but steady rain that persisted throughout the two day period. Of course now that the sun has returned, the damp will be trapped at ground level and the humidity will provide an excellent breeding ground for disease. My guess is that we will probably be spraying at some point in the next few days.

Bearing in mind that we are obliged to occasionally treat our vines, prolonged periods of dry weather obviously mean that we spray less, saving time, money and the environment. Every cloud has a silver lining, if you'll pardon the pun.

Mist, mizzle, drizzle, but no real rain....

And now time for a quick weather update...... (admit it, you've been dying to know!)

A day or two before my friends arrived for a long anticpated visit from New Zealand, quite inevitably, our weather changed. After weeks, nay, months, of warm sunny weather, the temperature suddenly dropped by around 8°C, and the skies filled with cloud.

To be perfectly honest we could have done with a good soaking of rain, but so far we have had nothing more than a week of low cloud, the horrible 'hanging' mizzle that somehow just sticks to your clothes, and a few light showers.

Once our vineyards dry out, then I will be the first to admit that a bit of treatment is going to be needed - I have said it once, and I will say it again - the Galician climate is simply too unpredictable for us not to intervene at some point.

Having said all that, we are still anticipating an early harvest. My guess is still the end of August.

Normal service is resumed

Ironically the sun is shining today..... I say ironically because for the last few days it hasn't been shining at all, and on the day that I chose to write about all the rain we've had, the sun has come out!

You may recall that we had a very dry summer, from the month of June until well after the harvest we hardly saw a cloud, and you could count the number of rainy days that we had on one hand. Finally it would appear that normality has been restored, the rainfall simply demonstrating why Galicia is the most verdant corner of Spain.

I really just wanted to write so that I could post this picture of our new pool at the front of the Bodega - for a few moments it seemed like a monsoon was sweeping over our area leaving our roads momentarily more like rivers.

Autumn is here

After such a warm, dry summer, Autumn 2010 has come as a bit of a shock to the system - cloud, rain and much cooler temperatures. Time to pack away the swimming trunks until next year (not that I ever venture into the Atlantic Ocean which is freezing at any time of year).

Immediately after the harvest we find ourselves in a state of limbo - most of the hard physical work of the harvest is completed, but it is still far too early to start pruning in the vineyards. This gives us time to catch up on a few outstanding jobs, that will quite simply be dictated by the weather. If it stays dry we will replace the roof on one of our outbuildings, but if it continues to rain, we will probably renovate the entry hall of the bodega.

I should add that when I say that the harvest is completed, this of course does not mean that the fermentation is finished. It is still ticking over in the background. All we can do now is monitor the density (measuring the amount of residual sugar still to be converted to alcohol), and adjust the temperature of each tank accordingly. If we did not use strict temperature control the fermentation process would race out of control, perhaps finishing within a week, and the resulting wine would be pretty dreadful - fat, flabby and lacking in any real varietal character. Not at all what we want.....

The demise of Albariño?

Does climate change spell the end for Albariño? Apparently so, according to recent research carried out by famous winemakers from other regions of Spain. They sensationally predict that our beloved grape variety will fall into deep decline as the planet warms up......"The temperature increase caused by climate change will affect Albariño in the coming years as  it will tend to lose flavor and acidity. Alternative solutions will be needed to maintain the character of the wine, such as farming in cooler mountain areas".

Now, anyone who knows anything about wine will tell you that the warmer the climate, the lower the acidity, and that in extreme conditions the end result will be a very bland wine as the grapes lose their aromatics. This is a fundamental rule in grape cultivation that has been known and understood for many centuries, so why this should come as a startling new revelation is anybody's guess.

Having said that, it is very interesting to learn that one of the main protagonists behind this new theory is the famous house of Miguel Torres from Catalunya, and you will never guess how they conclude their report. " In the Mediterranean we have high mountain areas where Albariño could be grown with good results, benefiting from cooler nights and slower maturation". Enough said.....

By the way, does this now mean that Bodeaux Chateaux will have to re-locate to the foothills of the Alps and Burgundy Domaines to the Massif Central in order to remain viable?

No ifs, no butts..... please

A pretty disgusting picture, which to be honest, turns my stomach - I have never smoked in my life, nor do I ever wish to. Thankfully I have never understood the need.

So why have I turned to cigarettes today? Well, actually, I haven't, but our local government and police have, and believe it or not it is related to the weather. Having experienced virtually zero rainfall for the last two or three months, it is not only our vineyards that are dry, but it is also our local forests and vegetation that are suffering too. This of course equates to an acute fire risk, such as those we experienced in 2006. Indeed, only about 60 or 70 kilometers south of here, just across the Miño river in Northern Portugal, severe forest fires have now been raging for some time.

Therefore, one of the precautions taken by the authorities is to remind motorists, using the matrix signs on our motorways, that disgarding cigarette butts (or is it cigarette ends?) from your car window can lead to a penalty of four points on your driving licence if you are caught - and in this case points do not lead to prizes!

Following on with my drought theme, if you look carefully at this photo you might think that the lady in the white uniform is watering some plants..... not so, she is washing the ground. This is a daily ritual, come rain or shine, whereby two ladies with hosepipes spend about half an hour washing the entrance and pavement area outside a local hotel (which I will not name simply because this is not the point of my story). There does not appear to be any such thing as a 'hosepipe ban' over here in Spain, and in this way the Spanish appear to be neither considerate nor concerned when it comes to the waste of water.

It was only a day or two ago that Angela's uncle Fernando (a local plumber), was telling us that his most frequent call-out at the moment is from consumers who rely on underground wells to draw their water..... the wells are starting to dry up, and so we have to assume that the situation must be pretty serious in some places.

Just as a footnote, I have always rather suspected that the Spanish may suffer a little from what I call "escobaphobia" - a morbid fear of brushes or brushing. The reason I say this is that if they see a few leaves or a bit of dirt on the ground, their automatic reaction is to reach for the hosepipe rather than simply taking out a brush - as I mentioned before , a serious mis-use of water in my opinion.

The harvest looms in very dry conditions

Galicia remains one of the driest places in Spain at the moment, and despite our prayers we have only enjoyed one day of light rain in the last couple of months. As I write this post the temperature remains up around 30°C (86°F), and whilst we normally require a good deal of sunshine during the growing season, in 2010 it has simply been a bit excessive.

With our vines showing signs of stress, it now looks like we might start to pick around the middle of September, rather than at the end of the month as we had originally anticipated (you may recall that we had a fairly late flowering). Some other denominations in the south of Galicia are predicting a start date as early as the 6th September.

One of the few upsides of a summer without rain has been the reduced number of treatments required in the vineyard, obviously the dry conditions have not been supportive to diseases such as mildew, and as a result there has been little or no intervention needed.

This week we embark on a major cleaning programme in the bodega as all the equipment used only once a year at harvest time, needs a good scrub down in preparation for the big 'kick-off'.

We're back!

OK, so I acknowledge that I am the 'king of corny jokes', and probably leave many people wincing when they discover my twisted sense of humour for the first time, but I can assure you that my story this morning was not in any way staged or planned in advance......

I always intended to write something witty about our return to work with 'batteries fully charged' and ready for the forthcoming harvest, but then one of my batteries went and died on me!

It seems like my car (that I had barely used last week) decided to take an extended break, and so my eagerness to get back to work was curtailed slightly when my engine failed to start this morning. Fortunately I have a set of jump leads and was able to make my way to the Bodega with only the minimum of delay. Suffice to say that my car is now charging, albeit that I had to dismantle half of the boot (trunk) to get to the battery.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we still have a little bottling and labelling to finish before we start on the pre-harvest deep clean, and the other news is that today we have our first real rain for several weeks. We have had a little 'mizzle' in the last day or two, but today we are enjoying a good shower of rain. One or two days of gentle rain at this point will not go amiss, as this will only benefit the vines that have been suffering during the extended hot period - a return to fine weather in a couple of days would then be perfect......

We have our fingers crossed.

Wind power!

Did you know that Spain, along with Germany and Denmark, is one of the top wind power producers in the European Union? It is now claimed that up to 40% of the country's total demand is supplied by wind turbines, and as you might imagine, many of them are situated here in Galicia. Many of the rolling hills in the north of our province are dotted with some fairly impressive wind farms (or perhaps ugly wind farms, depending on your point of view). Which ever way you decide to look at them, it is a very green, and sustainable way to produce electricity. Even so, the Spanish Government is not resting on it's laurels - it is aiming to triple the amount of energy it derives from renewable sources by 2020. Certainly an ambitious target.

I write about this now simply because, for the last week or so, we have endured some fairly persistent, strong winds in our area (ideal for the turbines I would guess). I am not sure about the actual wind speeds, but suffice top say that we certainly had to hang on to our glasses and cutlery during an attempted barbeque lunch yesterday!

You may gather from this story that, despite the strong winds, temperatures have remained high, at around 30°C (86°F), but having said that, there is still something fairly odd happening..... these are warm winds blowing from the north.

I did check on a couple of weather websites before I made this post, just to make sure that it was not just my imagination, but indeed, it would appear that the winds are coming down from the south of Ireland, and across the Bay of Biscay. To date I have no explanation as to why they should be so warm.

Our unpredictable weather

Yesterday morning I was rudely awakened at about 6am by high winds whistling around our home, rattling the shutters on our windows. By 6.30am the wind had died almost completely as it was replaced by a huge thunderstorm which rolled over the hills from northern Portugal (perhaps sent by way of revenge for their World Cup defeat to Spain).

It transpires that over the next 24 hour period the number of lightning strikes in Galicia exceeded all previous records, with over 7,000 recorded flashes - 4,000 during the morning storm, and a further 3,000 later in the day. Since the formation of Galicia's local weather bureau back in 2001, it has apparently been rare to see days exceeding 4,000 strikes, and so this extraordinary number has set a new benchmark.

Suffice to say that this storm did not feature in any forecast, as many different weather sites predicted only a 25% possibility of any precipitation (some showed no rain at all). They certainly did not forecast the heavy rain that caused local flooding and traffic chaos in the Galician towns of Ferrol and Carballo.

My very favourite and most reliable weather predictor is shown in the photo above - I am planning on making one!

Mist or fog?

It's not so complicated really - the difference between mist and fog is about 1km..... Fog reduces visibility to less than 1 km, whereas mist reduces visibility to no less than 1 km but less than 2 km. For aviation purposes, a visibility of less than 2 km but greater than 999 m is considered to be mist if the relative humidity is 95% or greater - below 95% haze is reported. Are we all clear on that, or is it still all a bit foggy?

Fog usually forms when the difference between temperature and dew point is less than 2.5°C (4°F), and relative humidity is approaching 100%. The water vapour in the air condenses and the result is fog or mist.

The reason that I mention all this is because for the last few days our coastal region has been shrouded in sea fog - also known as sea fret or haar. Believe it or not coastal fog has a little more to do with the amount of salt in the air. All types of fog and/or mist need minute hydroscopic particles upon which the water vapour can condense, and the presence of sea salt in the air makes this much easier, allowing it to form where humidity is as low as 70%.

Of course all this sea mist hanging around is not good for grape growing - the sun cannot penetrate, the temperature stays lower, and the humidity remains high - ideal conditions for fungus in the form of oidium or mildew. Naturally we have to take precautionary measures to combat this..... 

A bit of sun would be nice

The wind that is blowing from the North at the moment, is not only carrying the cloud of volcanic ash that I mentioned two days ago, but is also bringing some pretty chilly weather.

After a long, wet winter we did not really see the first sustained period of sunshine until the beginning of April, but unfortunately that didn't last too long. The first days of May have been cool and changeable - the maximum daytime temperatures this week are between 16°C and 18°C (only 60°/64°F), with the nights a good deal cooler.

The next few weeks will see the flowering in our vineyards, and for this to be healthy and even, we really need a week or two or warm sunshine. We have our fingers crossed.

Is winter finally behind us?

Well, Easter has come and gone, the clocks have been put forward, and winter has officially ended - on paper at least. From comments I have been making over the last few months you would be forgiven for thinking that we have had a seriously wet winter, but according to official figures rainfall has been only slightly above average. Temperatures too have been only one degree below the norm, but by far the most significant feature of this past winter has been instability - the most volatile and changeable for more than 10 years. In the last three months Galicia has witnessed two hurricanes, three small tornadoes, heavy snow and flooding.

Without getting over complicated and discussing Arctic oscillations etc., suffice to say that our usual winter airflows were sometimes replaced by much more unsettled and variable southern circulations, bringing with them rain, high winds and storm conditions. When air masses did arrive from the north, almost directly from the pole, the mercury plummeted, and parts of Galicia experienced record temperatures of -12C. So, yes, it would be fair to say that we had an unsettled winter.

Since the beginning of April we have seen a change to more favourable conditions - dry and sunny. The pruning and tying of vineyards is all but finished, just as the first shoots of the new season really start to push forward.

Whilst speaking of April, I should perhaps explain that my post on the first day of the month was indeed an April Fool's joke.... we are NOT making a rosado wine, and never will (not that orders were exactly flooding in)!

Storm Update

It would seem that my report of the weekend storm which swept across the north of Europe was more than a little premature. Of course much of my initial blog entry was based on our own personal experience here in Galicia, where with hindsight, we escaped rather lightly.

Almost inevitably with this type of natural disaster, it takes time for the reporting of fatalities and destruction to be collated, especially over such a wide area, and very regrettably, it now emerges that the number of deaths is much higher than I first reported.

Nearly 50 people have lost their lives, the worst hit being the west coast of France, around the Vendee and Charente-Maritime (an area just north of Bordeaux, and the centre of production for Cognac and Pineau des Charentes). Many of the victims were drowned in the rapidly rising waters, whilst others were killed either by falling trees or parts of buildings.

The aftermath of this powerful Atlantic storm, named Xynthia, has been declared a National Disaster in France, where the priority now is to help those with flooded or damaged homes, and to restore electricity to the large areas that have been cut off.

Our thoughts are with them, and also with the people of Chile and Haiti.....

A storm in a tea cup

Strong winds, driving rain, a little flooding, a few fallen trees and some very minor structural damage - that's about the extent of the problem caused by yesterday's storm.

Having said that, 3 people did lose their lives across Europe - two killed by falling trees, and one woman, here in Galicia, killed when a wall collapsed. During the height of the storm some gusts were recorded at up to 150kph (just over 90mph).

So the alerts and warnings were mainly precautionary, and to be honest you can not blame the Spanish government for being over cautious. Much better to be prepared, and 'batten down the hatches' than to be taken completely by surprise, as famously happened in the UK at the end of the 1980's.

On that occasion a BBC weather forecaster publicly dismissed a severe weather warning that had been isssued by his counterparts in France. That night a mini-hurricane swept across the southeast of England (including London) leaving some fairly major destruction in it's path.

What is it they say? Better to be safe than sorry.

Red Alert!

Close all your doors and windows, don't venture outside, leave the car at home, lock up your daughters...... well, maybe not the last one. These are some of the warnings that we have received over the last 12 hours, as a rather powerful storm heads towards the northwest of Spain and the Bay of Biscay.

Barely a week ago Funchal, the capital city of Madeira, was ravaged by storms, killing just over 40 people (and possibly more as they still search for the missing). In this case the heavy rain was compounded by mud slides and flash floods that destroyed houses and swept victims away, leaving the area without water, power and communication.

A second weather system, carried by the same jet-stream, is following a similar path across the north Atlantic, and is now gaining strength as it heads towards mainland Portugal and the northwest of Spain. Forecasters are predicting winds of up to 150/160 kph (100 mph), which is obviously a cause for concern. The storm is also rain-wrapped, so there is also a strong possibility of flooding in low lying areas.

Over the last few months we have already experienced more than our average total rainfall for the year, and this was before last Wednesday when we had heavy, torrential rain pretty much non-stop for the whole day and into the night.

Now let's see what mother nature holds in store for the next 12 hours!

How quickly it changes

Living on the Atlantic coast as we do, has it's benefits, and I'm not just talking about the beaches. It helps to moderate our climate, and means that in summer we do not suffer the extremes of temperature that they do a little further inland. The downside of this, as I am sure I have mentioned many times before, is that we have quite a lot of rain..... although in some ways this is no bad thing, as we do need the water to help vegetation. The real problem lies with the unpredictability of our weather. Martime climates are rarely settled, and can change in a heartbeat.

It was only Saturday afternoon when I made the post about my famous 'fried eggs' (sunshine with a little light cloud) - a weather forecast for our area taken from the web. By Monday night, just over 48 hours later, this forecast had changed to what you see above - normal pruning weather had been restored.

A sudden change in the weather at this time of year is not however, too much of a disaster, and simply means that the guys that are pruning have to pack their waterproofs. It becomes much more of an issue in summer and autumn.

In summer, on the occassions that we do have to treat our vines, we not only need a bit of dry weather, but for the treatment to be properly distributed, we also need a period that is not too windy. If the treatment that we give does not have time to dry and at least a short contact with the vines, then we might as well pour it down the drain. The real issue being that the best and most eco-friendly applications are always the most expensive, and we simply cannot afford to waste the time and money.

In autumn we have our harvest, when quite naturally, we pray for good weather to gather our crop.

A week of fried eggs

I exchanged e-mails with a friend down in Melbourne the other day, who reminded me that it was the first anniversary of 'Black Saturday', when more than 100 people died in raging wild fires across the state of Victoria. Angela and I remember it well, as it was the very day that we arrived in Melbourne.... high winds and temperatures of around 50°C (122°F), a surreal experience.

My point is that they were suffering from severe drought conditions, and this latest conversation revealed that they still are. Water is in very short supply.

I joked that they could have some water from Galicia if only we could constuct a pipeline long enough - we have had a very wet winter. It has rained almost continuously since November, and during that whole period we have not enjoyed more than a few dry days back-to-back (and certainly very little in the way of sunshine).

For the last few days however, we have been blessed with some beautiful winter weather - clear skies and cold temperatures, hovering just above freezing at night. As you will see from the forecast, this is set to continue for the next few days, with sunshine and a little cloud (fried eggs), making much more pleasurable conditions for pruning the vineyards.

Snowed under.... in paperwork!

Frozen Britain

As large swathes of Europe grind to a halt in blizzard conditions, the snow that was threatened around the city of Pontevedra came to nothing more than a very light 'dusting' - hardly enough to break out the snowboard....

Sure, it's been pretty chilly for the last week or so, with frost nearly every night, but nothing like the -21°C experienced in Scotland recently - colder than the average domestic deep freeze, and on a par with the South Pole. Indeed such extremes of temperature bring problems that are not encountered in normal everyday life, such as the diesel in the tank of your car turning to jelly!

So, where does paperwork enter into the story? Well, it's just another example of the incredible volume of admin and/or beaurocracy that is sometimes required to complete even a very trivial task in this country. To cut a very long story short, I went to our local hardware store to collect an electric drill that had been left for minor repair (annoyingly just out of warranty). On face value, a simple task.... or so I thought.

After one hour, involving two people, visiting two offices, necessitating eight sheets of paper (six A4 size), and then signing two of them, I was finally presented with the invoice....... 23 Euros + tax!!!! You have to ask yourself the obvious question - how on earth can this be cost effective?

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!