Pottering Around, 8th May 2015

This is the first of three related posts that I’m going to upload today, tomorrow and the next day.

I know it’s a bit late to be publishing posts that refer to events so long ago in the distant past (3 weeks ago! Gasp! Horror!), but unfortunately I’ve been really busy lately. Or fortunately! Depending on which way you look at it!

I think I may start to do some quick-n-dirty posts from now on, with nice photos, and some longer more thought-out posts interspersed every now and then. Otherwise it just takes me too long.

Pottering Around, 8th May 2015

Anyway. On this day, I was up bright and early and I went straight to the bodega; in the morning I sort of pottered around doing bits and pieces and tying up loose ends, as it were (bottling up samples, preparing some small orders for in Madrid, and tidying up a bit outside in the patio.

The patio is still looking like a mess! I’ve been trying to find the time to beautify it, but alas... progress is grindingly slow.

Here’s a few pics of the future arbour pergola chill-out area:

And here’s a few pics of the vegetable garden that I’m sharing with Daniel Ramos in the patio of our winery. Tomatoes, onions, peppers, courgettes, aubergines, lettuce, mostly.

And best of all, some proper wide-leaf Italian-style basil! With which to make jars of pesto sauce for the coming winter :)

Basil on the left, tatties on the right

The bodega itself is a bit of a mess too, and one of my main goals for this summer is clean everything thoroughly, including floors and walls, all tanks, vats, containers (steel, wood, clay, plastic), equipment (presses, crushers) and all other bits and pieces of stuff that I use.

After lunch, and very conveniently (for I had arranged it to be so!), I took delivery of an old barrica (600 litres, not the usual 225 litres) which I managed to find second hand and quite cheap too. It's been used for three wines so it shouldn't give too much oakiness to the wine any more. And being 600 litres, the ratios of volume to surface area are different from usual, which results in even less oakiness being transmitted. I'll probably use it for a Garnacha from El Tiemblo this year.

Here it is:

600 liter barrel, 2nd hand, from a winery in La Rioja

Then in the evening I met with Ariana Rolich, the store manager of CSW, who had come to see my vineyards and to taste my wines. So we did! After visiting a few of my vineyards near El Tiemblo, we tasted everything I had! Everything was showing well that evening/night. It must have been fruit day, with the moon and planets all lined up favourably! Even that horrible disgusting Chelva Early 2013 which I hate, was tasting not so bad to me. This is a wine that I was about to throw out because I thought that there was something wrong with it, but many people have assured me that it's perfectly fine! It's just that it has some aroma/taste that I don't personally like! As they say, there's no accounting for taste!

And here's the whites that we tasted through:

So ended an interesting and productive day. If only they were all like that J