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

More recycling of wine-bottles

The weather has been so bad recently, ie raining a lot, that we haven`t been able to finish pruning the vines, it's so muddy underfoot. It really must stop raining soon, as it's getting rather late in the year. The local folklore here says that you should have your pruning finished by San José, ie 19th March. Well, we have a week! I think the idea is to have the pruning done while the vines are still dormant and before the sap starts flowing, otherwise you'd be removing the nutrients that the vine needs to sprout before the leaves can photo-synthesize energy for themselves.

So, if the vineyard is out, .. to the winery, to recycle wine-bottles for the end of the month:

Ismael scrapes labels off

We left these bottles soaking last week, so most of the labels came off quite easily. Some, though are just impossible to take off no matter how long you leave them soaking. it makes you wonder what kind of glue these wineries are using.

More bottles soaking

We managed to de-label about 150 bottles, and next week (or whenever!) we'll set up the washing-sterilizing assembly line, before bottling and corking.

150 de-labelled green bottles

And talking about corks, here we have 000's of corks that we've been accumulating over the years. The idea is to make "curtains" for the windows and doors of the winery, but of course we never have any time! There's always something more urgent/essential to do!

Used corks awaiting recycling

Belated Post - Bottling, Corking and Posing in the Winery

This post should have been uploaded two weeks ago, but I was waiting for my friend Edu to send me the photos, as I forgot my mobile (cell-phone) that day! He finally sent them last night, so here we go.

These first three are of poeple actually working:

Manually filling bottles of wine

Manually corking the young red (97% Garnacha, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon)

More manual corking

And these ones are of people posing:

Yours truly (Fabio) beside the fermentation tanks

Bottlers, corkers and quality controllers

Lovely lunch, after a hard morning's work

Bottle-Washing in the Winery (2)

Last Sunday 31st January, we were filling bottles of young white (100% Airen) and young carbonic maceration red (97% Grenache, 3% Cab Sauv). This was a pleasant fun task, as it was accompanied by interesting conversations, glasses of wine (quality control is important!) and regional music (specifically Manu Chao and Radio Futura on this occasion).

Unfortunately, before that we had to wash bottles and/or take the labels off. That wasn't so much fun, but at least we consoled ourselves knowing that we were doing a good turn for the environment by recyclcing so many bottles - and not only we 4 who were there, but also all our beloved consumers who made the effort to return their bottles and (in some cases!) to take the labels off :)

José Luis and Fermín taking labels off, and Juan in the background, at the bottle-washing machine

Fermín and José Luis taking off more labels

More bottles to be soaked for the next time

Strict quality control procedure

Bye-bye Vineyard

We are kind of sad today at Vinos Ambiz as we have ‘officially’ relinquished the big vineyard in Ambite (Madrid region, Spain), that we took on just over a year ago. We saw this coming, but it’s hard when it actually comes about.

Cabernet Sauvignon

As some of you may know already, it was a vineyard that was abandoned and had run wild for 2 years. There was about 15 acres of Tempranillo and 5 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon. Our plan was to prune it, enclose it with a fence, uproot the tree saplings, and generally nurse it back to health and eventually to full production. (See some earlier posts from last year)

More Cabernet Sauvignon

However, to cut a long story short, it turned out that most of the vines (about 80% of them) were dead. The only viable solution for this vineyard would have been to uproot the dead vines (or even all of them) and replant, which unfortunately we can’t afford to do.

Tempranillo vines with oak tree

Well, it was an expensive lesson learnt!

Vine 'crying' - just like us!

The only good thing about it (appart from the lesson learnt, and the good times we had in the vineyard during the course of the year! - see previous posts) is that we managed to harvest ('scrounge') about 100 kg of Cab Sauv grapes from the abandoned vines which we then crushed, fermented and blended with our Garnacha ('Grenache') wine to make blend of 3% Cab + 97% Garnacha.

Woe in the Winery

Well, over the weekend we made a start on fixing the roof of the winery. There were several leaks during the Christmas holidays, though luckily there was no serious damage. The stainless steel vats full of wine were all under leakless parts of the roof. Our carboard boxes, though, were soaked and we had to throw them out. Also, our two oak casks have grown mould, due to the dampness - luckily they weren't full of wine. We will have to clean them thouroughly and disinfect them.

'Uralita' panels and ancient tiles

We managed to do about 25% of the roof area. First we lifted the tiles off, then we put down corrugated panels of 'uralita' and then put the tiles back down on top. Easier said than done!

A well-deserved glass of wine

If all goes well, we should be done with the roof, this week. Then we have do the pruning in the vineyard, and wash/recycle a few hundred bottles!

Cabernet Sauvignon harvest and crushing by foot

Yesterday (Sunday 25th October 2009) we did a partial harvest of the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in the vineyard in Ambite.



It was a very strange harvest for a number of reasons:



Firstly, as can be seen from the colour of the leaves, it was very late in the season and the grapes were way past their optimum state. Sugar level too high, acidity level too low. Probably over 14º alcohol.


Lots and lots of tiny bunches

Secondly, the vineyard was abandoned 3 years ago and the parcel we harvested hadn't been pruned. So the clusters were very numerous and very small. The berries were very small too. The ration of juice to pip/skin was very low!


Difficult to access

Thirdly, we only managed to pick about 50 kg, even thought there were 8 of us! Why? Well, we started late, those tiny clusters hardly weigh anything, they were difficult to access, and we were invited to lunch/barbecue!


Still difficult to access

Apart from picking the grapes we also managed to crush them (underfoot) and pour them into a fermentation vat.

Foot massage therapy