Intense Three Days of Vinous Activities - Day 1

Last Friday 26th March I got up early so as to get to the winery as soon as possible because I knew I had an intense 3 days ahead of me. First I had to bottle and cork about 100 bottles of assorted wines: some young white (2009, 100% Airén), some young red (2009, 97% Garnacha 3% Cab Sauv) and some Crianza (2008, 100% Tempranillo). Thankfully the Crianza was already bottled last year, so I only had to pack it up in boxes.

Crianza Labels

The day before I had prepared sticky labels to distinguish it from the young red – as all our bottles are recycled/reused it’s difficult to tell one from the other as all the shapes, sizes and colours of the bottles are used randomly among all the types of wine!

Crianza labels close up

This is what we call in Spain a ‘chapuza’, ie a quick-n-dirty highly unprofessional job done very quickly (and perhaps effectively).

Crianza bottles being labelled

More Crianza bottles being labelled

 

On the way to the winery I wanted to stop off in Tielmes at the laboratory where they’re doing an analysis of some of our wines, to ask when the results would be in, but it was closed - Easter holidays started early for some! So, on to the winery, or rather on to the bar for a coffee and sticky bun, before starting the bottling.

I needed all those bottles for an organic trade fair in Puebla de la Sierra (Madrid) – more on this event in Part 2 of this post. Well, the bottling was quite straight-forward, as I’d soaked and scraped off the labels beforehand. While I was at it, I bottled a couple cases for some consumers and on the way back to Madrid that night I dropped them off in Perales.

State of the vineyard on Friday 26th March

It was now about lunch-time and time to go to the vineyard to do some more pruning. We STILL haven’t finished, but there’s not much left to do. After munching down a ‘bocadillo’ and a swig of wine in the vineyard, I managed to do quite a lot of pruning; when till the sun started to set, it got chilly and a cold wind came up, so I decided to call it a day even though I could have carried on for another hour or two before it got too dark to see. And besides, my back was sore.

Another view of the vineyard