Natural Wine fair in Madrid (and other ramblings)

Yes, incredible but true!  There's going to be a mini-natural wine fair held in Madrid this coming Sunday 10th May 2015. I say 'incredible' because it's been many years, if not decades, that natural wines have been produced, sold and drunk around the world, but the phenomenon seems to have passed Spain by. But mustn't complain! It's going to be a great event, and great fun shall be had by all :)

Save the date and the place, which is very conveniently very central and right next to Atocha train station:

Here's the list of the producers:

– Alexandre Coulange – Domaine Thuronis – Languedoc
– Jacques Broustet – Chateau Lamery – Burdeos
– Nacho González – La Perdida – Valdeorras
– Bárbara Magugliani y Joan Carles Torres – Can Torres – Ampurdán
– Manel Rodríguez – Wiss – Montsant
– Marcel Carrera y Ramón Viña – Vinya Ferrer – Terra Alta
– Miguel J. Márquez – Dagón – Valencia
– Rafa López – Sexto Elemento – Valencia
– Fabio Bartolomei – Ambiz – Madrid
– Julián Ruiz – Esencia Rural – Toledo
– Samuel Cano – Patio – Cuenca
– Juan Pascual López – Viña Enebro – Murcia
– Jose Miguel Márquez – Marenas – Montilla
– Ramón Saavedra – Cauzón – Granada
– Torcuato Huertas – Purulio – Granada
– Manuel y Lorenzo Valenzuela – Barranco Oscuro – Granada

And you'll be able to taste the wines of:

– Domaine Meyer – Alsacia
– Patrick Bouju – Auvernia
– Costadilá – Veneto
– Frank Cornelissen – Sicilia

Only €5 to get in, and you get to keep the glass! A bargain at twice the price :)

Other Ramblings

Well, I've been incredibly busy lately and amongst other things I managed to plant about 200 new Tempranillo vines in the Carabaña vineyard in the empty spaces where the vines were missing for some reason or other.

Here's a panoramic view of the vineyard from a few days ago. Note the grass just starting to grow, and the tubes protecting the newly planted vines:

Panoramic view of Carabaña vineyard

 And here's a view from the top! See the cane for the young vine to grasp onto, and you can just see the tiny vine at the bottom:

Bird's eye view!

I also managed to hoe up around about 30 vines or so, before my back said 'enough'!

Hi hoe, hi hoe, it's off to work I go!

Meanwhile, back at the bodega, I finally got round to bringing a barrica of Tempranillo 2010 from the previous bodega I was working out of, in Morata de Tajuña, two years ago(!) to my current bodega in El Tiemblo.

Due to the fact that a full barrica weighs about 275 kg, and in a not very accessible position, what I had to do was: pump the wine out of the barrica into a steel tank in the back of a van, load the empty barrica, drive to El Tiemblo, and then pump the wine back into the unloaded and palletized barrica:

Pumping Tempranillo back into its barrica

I also finally got round to tidying up the patio of the bodega a little bit. Here you can see the space next to the wall that used to be covered with brambles, which I had left alone on purpose last year, in the hope of harvesting some brambles! But there were hardly any to be had, so I uprooted the lot. Pending for May is the planting of some roses or other climbing plants that will help prettify that enormous blank wall!

Here below you can just make out the tiny plants of lettuce, tomato, onions, etc:

 And the latest addition to the garden is some basil. The large-leaved Italian variety. I actually have lots more plants to plant, in fact I intend to cover that whole row, in order to make jars and jars of pesto :)

The main thing that I managed to do though was to bottle up all my 2014 vintage wines (Airén, Doré, Albillo, Sauvignon Blanc, Garnacha, Tempranillo), and free up all my fermentation vessels, and so I can relax over the summer knowing that all I need to do is wash them before use!

Here's where I store all my wines these days - in niches under the concrete fermentation tanks:

The Albillo niche

And lastly, yet another pending item on my "to do" list - this is the future lovely pergola, that will be covered in vines and hanging fruit, providing a shady decadent luxurious space for slothing around in easy-chairs and/or hammocks while sipping wine and nibbling on aperitivos! Alas, it won't be ready for at least another year:

The future decadent wine-tasting area

And really lastly, I was in a place in Madrid the other day where they had an interesting selection of extraterrestrial wines:

"Importados de otros mundos" = "Imported from other worlds"

Tasting and Pruning With Gabriel

I spent the other day (Sun 2nd Feb) pruning with Gabriel, my first ever "intern" who spontaneously volunteered to work for free in return for whatever I could teach him! Wow! I was honoured that anyone would want to do that. Lots of people have helped me in the vineyards for free over the years of course, but they were always people I already knew - family, friends, regular consumers of my wine, etc.

Gabriel tries his hand at pruning

On this occasion it was different, as I'd only met Gabriel (Sánchez Blocona) about 2 weeks ago at a tasting that we were at. As it happened, it was a tasting of the wines of Basilio Izquierdo, which would merit a whole post to itself, as there were some really incredible wines there. Including some really old ones (for me!) like a CVNE 1948 which is the oldest everest wine I've ever tasted in my life. But I won't go on about that - I've been getting paranoid lately about turning into a wine-bore! I think that's what happens when you read the Hosemaster of Wine!



Anyway, that was in the morning. After lunch (here) (which, btw, was the most expensive lunch I've ever paid for in my life, and where I witnessed for the first time a bottle of wine being opened with a pair of heated tongs!) we (Gabriel and I) decided to gate-crash another tasting in the evening.



This one was one of these wine-tasting clubs of friends who get together regularly to taste and comment on interesting wines. I knew a few of these friends (including Alfredo Maestro) so I figured that they wouldn't mind. As luck would have it they were doing a blind tasting, which I love, even though I never identify any of the wines.



The only clue we had was that all 6 bottles were non-Spanish. Incredibly, I was the only one who identified the country of provenance of 4 of them (Georgia)!  I think this was because no-one else there had tasted Georgian wines before, while I had - once, two years ago in London at RAW fair. Amazing! Then of course I had to explain that I'm not an expert or even experienced taster and that it was just luck that I remembered those wines. This is true, I'm a very inexperienced wine-taster, as the only tasting I ever do is of my own wines, and even then just checking for faults/off-tastes/strangeness/etc. I'm practicing though, and I try to get to whatever tastings I get invited to, time and tasks permitting!



Gabriel on the other hand is a wine-geek, an experienced taster, and collector of old rare wines. But he doesn't know much about grape-growing, vineyard work, pruning, etc. So, there was a win-win situation if ever there was one.

Now pruning is quite a skilled task, it's not just manual labour; so it's a bit of risk to just let anyone loose in your vineyard with a pair of pruning sheers! :)  A bit of a risk only in the sense that he/she might snip off a bit too much, or the wrong canes, and hence reduce the production of a few 'mutilated' vines!  I mean to say, it's not a catastrophy or a disaster. Vines can survive a lot worse than a crazy pruner :)  But in any case, why do it wrong, when it's so easy to do it right?

Here's me pruning a vine

So this is what we did: First he just followed me and watched, while I pruned and explained. But that gets boring after a while and the 'student' doesn't really learn anything new, after so much theory. So I sent him a vine ahead of me to do some pre-pruning. This entails snipping off all the obviously unwanted little canes, the canes growing from obviously wrong places and those growing in obviously wrong directions (all of which I explained beforehand).

Nice ladybird. Super-predator. Eats up all those nasty aphids

Contemplating ladybirds :)

 
I also got him to snip back all the remaining major canes but leaving 5 or 6 buttons. Then I myself would either prune these canes right back to the wood, or prune it to 1 or 2 buttons, as appropriate.

Those tasks that I set Gabriel to are very useful for getting to know those obviously useless canes, which can then just be snipped off without a second thought, and also for learning to handle the pruning shears, getting to know their weight and balance, how far they open, possible angles of entry, etc.

Nice earthworm. Sign of healthy living soil

His final task was to pick up all the snipped canes from where they fell and to put them in little piles in the middle of the lanes. Now that really is pure manual labour, but it saved me a lot of time :)  Come on, I had to do SOME brutal exploitation!  :)

Vine and thistle

The next time he comes out to help me, I'll teach him how to actually choose which canes to prune and keep, and which ones to prune right back to the wood. That is of course the most important piece of knowledge in pruning. How well you do that impacts not only the quantity of grapes that the vine will give you that year, but also long-term it will affect the health, vigour and longevity of that vine.

Ready, steady, prune!

Gabriel is also an awesome photographer, and he took all the photos in this post (except for the one of himself, obviously!).

His camara has also got this function that makes speedy videos. (For UK reader: think Benny Hill!) Check it out:

I'd be happy to teach anyone who wants to learn what I know. It's just a question of arranging to meet. Which is actually more difficult than it sounds because I usually don't know when I'm going to prune until a few days before! Anyway, feel free to contact me if you're interested.

Another really useful thing to do when short of time and you have thousands of vines to prune, is simply to temporarily duplicate yourself:

Me and my double ready to go

 After a hard day's work, our just reward:

In a bar, back in Madrid

Very pretty, but is it art?  ha ha!

Harvest Report 2013: Dammit, Everything is Going Wrong this Year!

Well, not everything, but it's hard to be objective when all sorts of sh** happens every day!

I really shouldn't complain, because, despite everything, I've managed to find an awesomely beautiful and spacious bodega (winery) which has infinite possibilities, and which only requires a bit of time, thinking, and planning to make a go of. In the meantime, though, short term, many things are going pear-shaped, and my wine plans (such as they are) seem to be changing every other day. I've made a big effort this year to be rigorous and systematic, and to actually write things down on paper, but I wonder why I bother, as every day brings an new 'event', phone call, circumstance or whatever, that radically changes all my previous plans.

My awesomely beautiful and spacious bodega!

 Anyway, whatever. Here's my latest status, as of today:

Grapes in, wines made, wines being made:

1. Albillo. This year, I made my first ever lot of Albillo. Seeing I've just moved into my new bodega in El Tiemblo, in the Gredos mountain range, I just had to make some Albillo. It seems that this is a variety that is in danger of extinction, as only a few winemakers use it. The problem is that it's also used as a table grape, and is very expensive and difficult to find. I was only able to find a small lot of about 400 kg at the last minute (see this previous post of mine). The wine I made is now practically dry, or perhaps still fermenting very slowly, as I can get a slight whiff of CO2 when I stick my nose into the tank. I don't know what it's going to be like, but I think it will be OK and will only get better after the cold of winter. The fermentation was fast and hot, as I wasn't able to keep it cool, due to 'circumstances'. Next year I will definitely do at least two different experiments. Live and learn. And enjoy!


2. Tempranillo from Carabaña. I harvested it a few weeks ago, last Sunday 22 September. Lovely bunches, totally healthy, not a single symptom of mildew or anything else. I was well pleased. I destemmed and crushed the bunches by hand, and the wine is still fermenting slowly on its skins. The last reading I took a few days ago showed a density of 1020, so almost finished. I've been punching the cap down once a day (and sometimes no times at all). That's not a lot by present day standards, but I don't really want to extract it to death. Nice and easy does it :)  I think I'll press it off over the next few days, before the weekend, maybe. There's only enough to make one barrica (225 liters, or 300 bottles) of Crianza.

3. Chelva. This is a local white variety that grows mostly in Extremadura, but which is found around El Tiemblo too. It's a variety that is looked down upon and frowned upon. It's used for table grapes and has a very negative cultural and vinous reputation. But hey, so does Airén, and I've managed to make a pretty mean and interesting Airén over the past 10 years, which sells very well and generates positive feedback for me, so who's to say I can't do the same with Chelva? There's only one way to find out, isn't there? So I'm doing several different experimental lots this year:

- Chelva Experiment #1. Carbonic Maceration. On Wed 18th September I sealed up a 300 liter tank with selected whole bunches of Chelva. It's still sealed as I write today. Soon, I'll check it out and decide what to do.

- Chelva Experiment #2. Frutteto style. Acting on the good advice of fellow winemaker Daniel Ramos (with whom I'm sharing the new bodega), I laid out about 500 kg of bunches upstairs on the 1st floor of the bodega, in order to dry them out a bit and increase the sugar concentration. They lay there for about two weeks and the other day I also crushed and pressed them, and they had indeed increased in sugar concentration. The reading I got showed 12.5% of probable alcohol; which seems rather a big increase, so I'm suspecting that one of the two reading may have been a bit off.

- Chelva Experiment #3. Crushed and left soaking on the skins, 'orange wine' style. That's about two weeks skin-contact time. This could well be one of the experiments that go wrong. The sugar content was very low and hence the probable alcohol level - only about 10.5%. This could well be lost to acetic acid. I did in fact have a close shave, as the other day when I opened the lid to check the cap, I got a huge whiff of vinegar. To be expected I suppose, with no added SO2, and such low level of alcohol. But all was not lost, it was only in the cap, as the wine I tasted from the tap at the bottom of the tank was OK. So I separated the cap, threw it out, and pressed the rest of rest of the skins.

After all that, I decided to blend the 'frutteto' and the 'carbonic maceration'). The regular vinegary lot, I doused with metabisulfite (about 40 mg/l), and sealed the tank hermetically. I don't know what will happen, maybe it'll turn to vinegar after all, or maybe it will survive. I'll check it every couple of days. Maybe I`ll blend it in turn with the other already blended lot of Chelva.

I was going to do more experiments with Chelva but I won't be able to now. This is because the grapegrower I bought the grapes from is completely unreliable and I couldn't get him to harvest on the dates I wanted.  For some reason or another he unilaterally decided to harvest one day (19th September) and appeared at the door of the winery with almost 1000 kg of grapes. Now if I had been a hard-nosed business-first type of person I would have told him to get lost and sell his grapes to someone else, and that I didn't want grapes with a probable alcohol level of 10.5%; but I don't know why, I took his grapes!

Actually, I'm even more pissed off with that grower because there was another 1000 kg left in the vineyard, which I intended to harvest this weekend, but which now I can't, because he's gone back on his word and he's decided to use it to make some wine himself!  What a disaster! Basically I end up with 1000 kg of grapes that I didn't want, and I don't get the 1000 kg of the grapes I did want!

All I can say is that I won't be buying any grapes off him next year. In fact, I'm even more pissed off, if possible, because I turned down another local Chelva grower who offered to sell me his grapes! Grrrrrrr.

4. Garnacha from Sotillo de la Adrada. Last week, Sat 28th and Sun 29th September, I harvested three different plots of Garnacha. It was hairy. The weather here in Spain that weekend was weird. They were calling for rain, but not too much. To harvest or not to harvest? In the end I decided to harvest, because 2 of the plots were ripe and had to be harvested, and if we got wet, well, we got wet! In the end we were very lucky, because we only got rained on a little on Saturday morning, and not at all after that. So I took in about 2000 kg, all of which I've decided to ferment whole-bunch carbonic maceration. And there they lie, fermenting carbonically, as I write.

Harvests Pending

1. My own Airén, in Carabaña. I checked it out the other day and it's showing just over 11% probable alcohol, which is not a lot really, cansidering the time of year. I'm going to leave it for another week to see how it goes. It was lloking really good, totally healthy, no signs of any rot or mildew or anything. Touch wood!

2. My own Malvar, in Villarejo. It was showing 12% probable le alcohol, so I'm going to leave it for another 10 days / two weeks too. In contrast to the Airén, the Malvar was rather uneven. There were lots of vines that had ripe or ripening bunches and at the same time bunches with tiny immature berries. Very irregular.

3. Tempranillo, El Tiemblo. A nice plot of organic Tempranillo (officially uncertified but grown by a trustworthy grower), which was at a probable 13% last week, but still unripe.

4. Garnacha, from El Tiemblo. Also uncertified organic. Only showing 12% last week, so probably another 2 weeks to go.

5. Maybe an extra surprise that I'm not expecting? I wouldn't be surprised :)

Apart from all that

Now apart from all the above unknowns, I also have other complications or "challenges" to deal with over the next few days or weeks.

Firstly, adding up all the kilos of grapes that will be coming in, I don't currently have enough storage capacity to process them all! This is incredible and/or ironic, but true, as I'm installed in bodega with a theoretical capcity of 1.2 million liters of wine, in the form of concrete tanks (of 16,000 liters each). The problem is that I can't really use them, as I don't have enough grapes/wine to fill even one of them, and it's very risky to only partially use a tank (especially a concrete one). Because of the oxygen contact and possible contamination from the walls of the unused part. So basically I have to buy a few thousand liters of capacity in the form of bins, containers, tanks, whatever. And my only practical option is plastic, because of the price. I would prefer stainless steel, or clay pots, but the cost would be prohibitive for me. I'm almost tempted to do a crowd-sourcing thing, to finance the purchase of say, 4 or 5 1000 liter stainless steel tanks or clay amphorae, but I just couldn't deal with that now. Maybe next year.

Secondly, I don't own a van, so I either have to borrow one from a friend, or rent one. Or not, depending on whether the grapes are ripe or not!

Thirdly, I don't own any cases for harvesting the grapes! I've always borrowed them. This is ridiculous really, and I ought to just go and buy some; there're not even that expensive! So it depends on whether my friends/acquainances are using their cases or not.

- Fourthly, labour!  Whether to hire a few professionals for the day, or to invite friends and family? That is the question.

So, all things considered...

Writing a post like this is very therapeutic for me, because it actually really does put things into perspective. It's very easy, in the middle of the harvesting season, to lose sight of the bigger picture, and small insignificant details can take on utterly ridiculous proportions and make you lose the plot and/or obsess about trivialities! I think it's important to maintain your grace under pressure. It doesn't matter if it all doesn't go 100% according to plan. Like someone once said "No plan ever survives contact with the enemy". And anyway, it's not like this is making war, it's just making wine! Though it is a bit like being a general, or a film director at times, because you are the person who's ultimately responsible for everything, and you're surrounded by people (be they friends/family, be thsy hired help) who are constantly looking to you for decisions, orders and answers to their questions. If you happen to be a general or a film director and you do this kind of thing every day, then I suppose it's easy, but if you only do it once a year, then it's hard to keep on the straight and narrow, to keep that grace under pressure.

Also, I think wine is a slow business, and I don't want to over-expand too fast. I'd rather go slowly and keep the same level of quality that I've been keeping over the years, than throw it all overboard in a year. I think this will be a good year for me, no matter what happens with the rest of the harvests. I have an awesome bodega in the middle of an undiscovered, traditional, wine-producing, terroir-rich, mountain range! It's all up to me to make the most of it now. Who cares if if I got a hair in my soup, or got 1000 kg of Chelva that I didn't really need?

Planting New Vines

At last! Hooray! After ten (10) years of thinking about it, and writing about it, and talking about it, I've finally done it!  I've planted about 150 vines in the empty spaces in the Carabaña vineyard, where a vine was missing for one reason or another.

 Newly planted vines, with protective tubing

I decided to plant Tempranillo, because the vineyard is a field blend of Tempranillo and Airén already, but there's not much Tempranillo - only just enough to make one barrel of crianza. I toyed with the idea of planting Malvar, or Torrontés or some other interesting local variety, but in the end I thought that there would be no point, as the quantity of wine I could make with it would be too small. I'll leave that idea for another project for the future.

 More newly planted vines

But the most crucial decision here was not really the choice of variety, but the choice of rootstock. In this case, the most important criterion (more important than resistance to drought, or resistance to disease, or resistance to limestone) was the fact that this is not a new vineyard and that the existing vines (about 50 years old) are very well established; and so their root systems will be very deep and wide and will be competing strongly for the water and nutrients in the spaces where the new baby vines will be struggling to survive and grow. So the rootstock had to be a vigorous and hardy one. The one that was readily available and which was recommended to me was one called "Paulsen 1103", which is not only vigorous, but also tolerant to drought and to limestone soils.

 Looking down into the tube

Well, that's half the job done this year. There's more to do next year! There are also about 100 vines in the vineyard where the grafted variety has died, for whatever reason, but where the rootstock is alive and kicking. These will have to be cut back and grafted.

They are so vigorous that in summer they turn into monsters like this one below:

A 'wild' vine, where the rootstock itself has sprouted

Tiny and numerous clusters on a 'wild' rootstock sprouted vine

And there are also about 20-30 vines that are dead and which will have to be pulled out.

I'm so glad I managed to do that task. It gets depressing when you think about doing something for so many years but never get round to doing it :)

Pruning, Planting, Bottling, Looking for a Bodega, Tastings, ...

Pruning

Well, it's pruning season again this year, and I'm running late again. There's just so much to do, apart from pruning, and apart from holding down a day-job and seeing my wife and kids every now and then!

Carabaña vineyard, half pruned

The ideal period for pruning, in my opinion, is between when the leaves fall off the vines (in December, more or less) and when the sap starts to flow (in spring more or less). This is because if you prune before the sap stops flowing or after it starts flowing, then you're removing valuable nutrients and strength from the vine. Some of my neighbouring grapegrowers start really early, before the leaves have fallen off, and some even do a pre-pruning at the same time as the harvest!!! Surely not good for the vines in the long term?

Unpruned vine

In Carabaña and in Villarejo the sap has started flowing. It's called the "lloro" in Spanish, which means 'weeping'. I've finished pruning in Carabaña, but I've only just started in Villarejo and it will take me another week to finish there. Oh well, at least I'm not running so late as last year, when the vines had actually started sprouting little leaves. In early May!!!

Planting

At last, after 10 years of talking about it and thinking about it, but not actually doing anything about it, I'm going to plant new vines in the empty spaces in the Carabaña vineyard. There are about 200 of them. I've done a bit of research and asked around already, and it seems that one of the most important things to consider is the choice of rootstock. Apart from the usual criteria, like climate, resistance to certain diseases, etc, in this case it's important to bear in mind that the new vines are going to be planted in an existing vineyard, as opposed to a totally new vineyard. So the rootstock has to be extra vigorous so as to be able to survive and thrive against the competition of their neighbouring old vines, which already have a deep and extensive root system.

If you look carefully at this above photo, you can see a few of these spaces.

I still haven't decided what variety to graft onto the rootstock. I could just go for Tempranillo or Airén, which are already in the vineyard, or go for an 'interesting' but unknown and uncommercial local variety, like Malvar or Torrontés (a Madrid variety, not to be confused with the Argentinean Torrontés or the Gallician Torrontés).

BTW, there's a local saying which goes: "Torrontés, ni la comas ni la des, que para buen vino es!", and which translates as something like: Torrontés, don't eat it or give it away, it's for making good wine, yay!

Then, apart from the empty spaces, there are also the vines which have run wild, ie the rootstock itself has sprouted and the grafted variety has died. Here I have the choice of uprooting the whole vine and planting a new one, or cutting it back and grafting a variety onto the existing rootstock. There are about 50 of these wild vines. And there are also about 50 old vines which have died but which are still in the ground. These have to be uprooted and new ones planted.

But one thing at a time! This year I'm just going to plant in the empty spaces and leave the wild vines and dead vines for another year!

Bottling

At the same time as the pruning, I've also been bottling up. On days when it's been raining too much to be able to go prune. I don't usually do this, but just bottle up from the tanks as orders come in all through the year. Which is convenient in the short term, but there comes a time, before the harvest, when I have to free up all the tanks, and so have to bottle everything that's left all at once. So this should gain me some extra time and peace of mind during harvest preparation time in August!

Yours truly bottling up some Malvar

Lo-tech gravity-driven bottling line

Looking for a Bodega

What a nightmare! What a country to try and do business in! Here we are in the middle of the longest deepest economic recession since the Great Depression of 1930, and there are hundreds of empty buildings, and even actual wineries, for rent everywhere. But is it simple, easy and straight-forward to rent one and start a wine business? No way, José! You'd think that local authorities would be interested in helping, or at least not hindering, small business startups, but unfortunately, it's not the case. The amount of red-tape and bureaucratic obstacles is just ridiculous. I'm not talking about sensible and valid requirements, like safe electrical installations, water connections, fire extinguishers, ventilation, etc, which is perfectly fine. I'm talking about other requirements like having to present an official project description, which you can't just type up yourself, but have to pay an 'expert' to do. And funnily enough it's usually the municipal architect/planning officers who say that as it happens they themselves can do those reports AND sign them off quickly and that'll be €2000 please, thank you very much! And other 'obstacles' which just magically disappear when money is passed! Oh well, mustn't complain! I will find a way!

Tastings

Thank goodness for tastings! Where would we be, and what would life be like without tastings? I hate to think! Anyway, I remember at least two tastings that I was at recently! The first was a tasting of some of my own new wines from 2012: a white (Airén), a red (Garnacha) and an 'orange' (Malvar). It was at Le Petit Bistrot, a bar/restaurant in Madrid, where they exclusively serve natural wines. The only natural winebar in Madrid - incredible but true. How can a country that produces 50 gazillion liters of wine every year only have one natural winebar in its capital city? Don't all shout out at once! Anyway, the tasting was a small, informal affair, with about 15 people, and I chatted and tasted with them all and answered their questions. I didn't have to give a speech or presentation in the end, though I'd prepared one!

The other tasting was even more informal, as it was just a bunch of friends who decided to get together one evening and do a blind Garnacha tasting just for fun, and see if we could guess where the Garnacha came from. We did it in the Vinoteca Pelayo in the Chueca district of Madrid. In the end we were not very successful at all in guessing the regions, even though some of the people there were experienced tasters, and in the wine trade!

A Bottle of Garnacha!

Visits

I also did another two mini-tastings with two Spanish journalists/bloggers in the space of 4 days from each other. Just like the number 27 bus, which never comes and then two come along at once! The first was Joan Gómez Pallarés, who apart from being a food/wine blogger, is a professor of Classical Literature at Barcelona university. He is currently on a month's leave and is touring round Spain, tasting regional foods and wines, and blogging about them, and he included me in his itinerary. He's already written a wonderful post (in Spanish) on his blog about his visit.

The next visit was from Mar Galván, who is a writer and professional wine-taster. She has her own blog here for her poetry and writings, and she also writes wine-related articles for Verema, which is the biggest Spanish language online wine site. A few days after her visit to me, she was participating in the final round of El Nariz de Oro ("The Golden Nose") blind tasting competition.

Mar Galván in the Villarejo Vineyard

Panoramic view of the Villarejo vineyard, taken by Mar

Another Geeky Natural Wine Transport Post (and more)

Following close in the wake of two pallets which have already safely landed in New York, another three pallets of natural wine from Vinos Ambiz (and six pallets from Alfredo Maestro) are on their way to the port of Oakland, California. They are aboard the good ship "Bellavia" who just left the port of Sines (Portugal) a few days ago and is right now somewhere in the middle of Atlantic Ocean bearing a precious cargo of natural wines from different producers from Spain, thanks to importer Jose Pastor Selections. She is due to arrive at the Panama Canal on 17th March.

The Good Ship Bellavia

 (© Patrick Lawson, MarineTraffic.com)

Oh, we sailed on the good ship Bellavia

Out of Arabia and into Moldavia
Cried the crew “No, no more natural wine!
“Give us back our grog and our brine”
or we’ll sail her and sink her in Moravia.

Check out her progress here:


This is such a cool site! At the click of a mouse you can bring up all sorts of useless interesting information on the progress of my (and others’ ) wines on their way from Europe to America, and which will then be distributed to warehouses and eventually find their way into restaurants and winestores all over the West Coast of the USA. Amazing!

Villarejo Vineyard

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, about 450 km from the nearest coastline, in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, here’s a photo (below) of the vineyard in Villarejo (where the Malvar grapes are from) that I took the other day. A grey and cloudy day, raining on and off. See the grass just starting to grow, see the really old vines (>100 yrs) with really deep roots, so that the surface grass with tiny short roots doesn’t compete for the scarce water, but instead provides biodiversity for insects and micro-life. :)



A grey day in Villarejo



A grey day in Carabaña too

Pruning season

Have started pruning, and am off to a good start. I've finished half of Carabaña already, and when I finish there, I'll start on Villarejo.

Red grapes all in, White not ready yet

Here’s another harvest post or update of the state of my harvesting this year. This is a good time for me to write this because I’m between harvests, as it were :)

I’ve brought in all the red grapes that I’ll be bringing in this year, and the white grapes are not ready to be picked yet.

So, what have I got this year?

1. The usual Tempranillo from Carabaña that I’ve been harvesting for the last 9 years! The quantity this year was ridiculously tiny – even more ridiculously tiny than usual! On the one hand, because of the drought (it hasn’t rained properly for about a year) and on the other hand because of the rabbits, who have again eaten more than their fair share of grapes this year, just like they did last year.

So, basically there’s less than 300 litres of juice + skins fermenting at this very moment as I write, which means that there will hopefully just be enough to make 1 barrel (225 l) of Tempranillo Crianza including a few litres for top-ups during the year. I harvested early this year, because I was fed up with making the usual +14% alcohol tinto Crianza! Although there’s never been anything actually wrong with my previous Crianzas, they’ve never been anything exceptional either, imho, and in that of others! Hence the risk of experimenting this year. Maybe it’ll turn out better at 13% or 13.5%. Who knows? But I’ll never know if I don’t try it at least once!

2. Some Garnacha from Gredos. I’m going to be a bit secretive here and save the details for later :) Ha ha! I’ll just say that I’ve got four (4) separate lots of old vine Garnacha that is already fermenting separately. Some in open top old wooden barrels, and some in stainless steel. Two lots are from separate plots in Sotillo de la Adrada (see this previous post) and two lots are from ... somewhere else in the Gredos region! Ha ha!

That’s all there is tinto-wise. This is what there will be, blanco-wise:

1- The usual Airén from Carabaña that I’ve been harvesting for the last 10 years. The grapes are not ripe yet – they were at 11% a few days ago, and there are still quite a lot of green bunches visible. I’d like to harvest this at between 12% and 13%, and make the usual young white that I usually make every year. I’m really happy with the way it’s been turning out, and I think my clients are too. I’m on a little, personal Airén crusade here, I think, because I believe that really good wines can be made with Airén, especially if a better winemaker than me were to put his/her mind and hand to it!

Airén has such a negative cultural and vinous baggage to carry! Sigh! Oh woe, is life not hard enough already without having to shoulder all this negative baggage? :) Ha ha, only jesting! Deep down, I’m really a masochistic cynical bastard who thrives on hardship and albatrosses! Ha ha, jesting again! But seriously, I really do like Airén and really do believe that great wines can be made from it. So I shall make more of the same this year, plus of course I shall do a few experiments. Firstly, as I have all these old barrels available, I’ll do a bit of fermenting in them, in addition to the usual stainless steel. Secondly, I hope to come up with some other experiment to do when the time comes! Suggestions welcome! Here’s an interesting article about Airén by FringeWines: 

2. Malvar from Villarejo. Again I’m going to do the same as last year with these grapes. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I was really pleased with last years’ wines and experiments. There were three lots of wines last year: Carbonic Maceration, Skin Contact (15 days) (‘orange’), and a straight 5-month skin contact ‘orange’ from an old amphora (tinaja in Spanish), all from the same Malvar from Villarejo. And I think my clients were happy with them too. So this year, I bought another amphora (see photo) so as to make another 300 bottles, in addition to the original 300!

And that’s it, I’m afraid (apart from the older wines from previous years that are still aging). Only about 4,000 bottles in total, I think. I had originally intended to make quite a lot more wine this year, but my best laid plans were rudely scattered to the winds by the great plough of life and circumstances, and will have to be rebuilt next year. C’est la vie!

So now, it’s the calm before the storm, ie just checking the white grapes in the vineyards, and checking on the red fermentations in the bodega.

Lastly, quite a few people have contacted me over the last few months with a view to visiting the vineyards and winery, but I haven’t been able to arrange these visits properly – due to my own inability to deal with emails and to arranging visits, etc. But I really do like receiving visits, so if you’re reading this, please just contact me again and insist harder! I’m not being exclusive or playing hard to get here, it’s just that I can’t cope with everything that I have to do all at once! So the ‘de facto’ or ‘fait accompli’ solution or whatever it’s called, is to tell me that you ‘have to’ visit on such-and-such a day, and then I’ll work all my other tasks and activities and urgent urgencies around the visit! Et violà! Problem solved!

And really lastly, I read somewhere that all posts should have at least one photo, so here it is:
 

Ambite vineyard under snow in January 2009!

Pruning Pruning Pruning

I've been pruning for 3 days in a row, and just about every weekend for around 2 months. When I close my eyes I can still see images of canes and vines!!!

Pile of canes

Unpruned vine

More canes

More unpruned vines

More piles of canes

The Carabaña (Madrid) vineyard, planted to both Airén and Tempranillo all mixed up, is almost finished - only about 100 vines to go. Then we'll start on the Villarejo vineyard, planted to Malvar, which has about 500 vines. Both these town are to the SE of Madrid and within the area covered by the D.O. Vinos de Madrid, though we're not regestered.

Unpruned vine in Villarejo

All our vines are low bush-type vines (fr: 'en gobelet'; sp: 'en vaso'), so it's quite hard on the old back muscles! The worst is at the beginning of the season, especially the first day, but after that it gets better.

Every morning, during the pruning season, I usually do some stretching and some sit-ups, which helps a lot and strengthens your muscles. The last three days were a bit much, though, so I'm going to give it a rest till the weekend.

Lots of unpruned vines

Pruned vines

More pruned vines

I think we're doing OK for time. The vines seem to be dormat still, as I haven't seen any "lloro" (crying!), ie a watery liquid that drips out of the pruning cuts. They should be waking up very soon now, as the max day temperature is easily about 25ºC here in central Spain. I've actually had to use sun-block and wear a hat! And drink 3 liters of water per day! It's still cold at night, but not below freezing any more.

After pruning each vine, we stack the canes in piles in the lanes between the rows of vines. In a month or so a tractor will come and chop them all up into tiny pieces. The tractor pulls a box-like implement behind it with revolving chins at ground level; the chains pulverize the canes and mow the grass and plants down to ground level. This is all good organic matter which improves the structure of the soil.

Spring is springing, slowly but surely. I've noticed more insect life lately in the vineyard. There are lots of ladybirds (ladybugs), and the other day I saw a lizard and a spider. Good predators! Yesterday a bee came by as I was having my lunch. As you can see from the photos, the ground is still quite bare, but the grass is starting to grow already. In about 2 weeks the ground will be visibly green.

Ladybird

I'm sorry if you found this post a bit boring, but that's all that's happening at the moment!
 
Here's a photo that's NOT of a vine or of a pile of canes :)
 

My lunch!

 
Here you can see my lunch in the back of the car! Bread, cheese, 'jamón', fruit. And in the background, my gloves, hat and pruning shears!