Harvests 2016 all done

Another year, and once again all the grapes are in. My last harvest was the Malvar on Monday 10^th October.  And not a moment too soon! Because after a long, long, hot, endless summer with zero rainfall, it stated raining heavily and properly all over Spain on Wed 12^th! Ha! So I’ll have to find something else to complain about, as viticultural tradition demands J

I did a total of 15 harvests this year, in 15 different plots, for a total of 15 different wines:

1.      Albillo (Charco)

2.      Albillo (Fx)

3.      Garnacha (Charco)

4.      Doré (Fx)

5.      Doré (Pp)

6.      Sauvignon Blanc (Qx)

7.      Tempranillo (TET-A)

8.      Garnacha (Castañar)

9.      Garnacha (Dehesa)

10.   Garnacha (McCarb)

11.   Chelva (Early)

12.   Villanueva

13.   Chelva (Late)

14.   Airén (Carabaña)

15.   Malvar (Villarejo)

That’s 2 red varieties (Garnacha and Tempranillo) and 7 white varieties (Albillo, Doré, Sauv, blanc, Chelva, Villanueva, Airén and Malvar).

I vinify each plot separately even if it’s the same variety, because it’s more interesting that way. It’s amazing how different the wines are, even if the plots are close together and the winemaking techniques are the same. For example, in El Tiemblo (Sierra de Gredos) the Garnacha Castañar plot is only about 1 km away from the Garnacha Dehesa plot as the crow flies, but the grapes and wines are totally different.

The novelty this year is a variety called Villanueva. It’s not uncommon in the area but it’s usually just a few vines interspersed among another predominant white variety. But by chance a local grower, who has an entire vineyard planted to Villanueva, came by the winery one day to offer them to me. ‘Why not?’ I thought. It’s a rather tiny plot, and there was only 150 kg. So I crushed them and pressed them and let the must ferment in small tinaja – in tinaja because it was the only container small enough available at the time!

All the rest I’ve done before, and am following the line of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’! That’s to say that for all of the wines listed above, I followed (am following) the same techniques that have worked for me in the past, with regard to decisions on type of container (steel tank, wooden barrel, clay tinaja), maceration times if any, with or without stems, etc.

The only crazy experiment I’ve done this year is to follow a recipe I read in Pliny the Elder’s ‘Natural History, Book 14, Chapter 12. I followed the first recipe of the three he gives. So I guess I’ve made (am making) a beverage called ‘deuteria’ by the ancient Greeks and ‘lora’ by the ancient Romans. This is the stuff that was quaffed by slaves and labourers. The original glou-glou wine?

Following are some assorted photos, from over the summer:

 

View of the Albillo (Charco) vineyard, with the Alberche river in the background.
El Tiemblo, Sierra de Gredos

Bird's eye view of Albillo macerating

Bottling machine

My Garnacha vineyard using no chemicals, next to a naked agro-chemical wasteland vineyard!

Bottling up

At a wine fair

Sheep in the Garnacha vineyard, eating weeds and dropping caca!

Sheep entering

Living soil, for healthy vines

My pet nat exploding on me! Too much pressure!

My Chelva vineyard, surrounded by the houses of El Tiemblo village

In another Garnacha vineyard, steep, in El Tiemblo, Sierra de Gredos

Bottling up!

And to finish off, a note on the word “sapid”

I generally find it impossible to have decent in-depth discussion on FB or other social media sites. And a few weeks ago, I found myself feeling frustrated because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say! I think that FB and other sites are just not the right place for a proper discussion or debate: basically, they all tend to favour spur-of-the moment, shooting-from-the-hip type comments, right there and then, whenever you happen to come across an interesting post that you feel like commenting on. There’s just no time to think before typing! Apart from wine, I also like words, so I was doubly affected!

This had been annoying me for days, so I decided to do something about it. After searching on the internet and after doing a bit of ‘due diligence’, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a very useful word to use in written wine-tasting notes or while speaking live to an audience. The due diligence consisted in asking native-English-speakers, uncontaminated by knowledge of a foreign language, if they knew what ‘sapid’ meant. Not one did! English-speakers who know a Latin language would know ‘sapido’ (It, Sp, Pt) or ‘sapide’ (Fr) where it’s quite a common word for everyday use and just make the connection.

Firstly it’s not a very common word at all in English (see here, this is just one of many word-frequency sites) and so it’s not likely that the readers/audience would understand what it means. This may depend on the level of knowledge/culture of the audience though, so an audience of hardened winelovers may have come across it before. But still!

Secondly, once you discover the meaning of ‘sapid’, you also discover how useless it is, for it means “having flavour” “tasty”. Which covers just about every edible/drinkable substance in existence, except for water!

I suppose that a slight degree of usefulness might be attained if a bit of common sense is applied by the reader/listener, ie by assuming that the writer/speaker really means ‘very’ or ‘extra’ flavourful/tasty. But then why bother with ‘sapid’ at all? Why not just say ‘very/extra tasty/flavourful’ and make life easier for your readers/listeners, who are after all reading/listening to you with a view to learning something about wine! But then again, maybe they would enjoy learning a new word? Or are happy to be introduced to the secret and occult world of wine-tasting? Or would they hate wine forever on account of the arcane vocabulary used?

Well, whatever. Anyway, I feel a lot better, now that I’ve got that off my chest.  J

In the Vineyard

January is already drawing to a close, and I'm focusing on three different aspects of my mini-wine-business: in the vineyards, pruning, removing the canes, hoeing up around the vines, and other miscellaneous activites like cutting grass, fixings drainage channels, and fences, and generally tidying up; in the bodega, bottling up older vintages from barrels, and filling said barrels with new vintages; and on the home front, writing a HACCP (pronounced "HAZOP"), ie a food safety management plan! Amongst other things. But enough of that! Here's my latest news from the mountains:

In the Vineyard

The other day I was in my other Garnacha vineyard in El Tiemblo (Sierra de Gredos), having completely finished pruning the first (rock rose infested) Granacha vineyard that I wrote about in my previous post. Actually, I still have to finish raking up pine needles and checking and fixing the perimiter fence, but those tasks I have relegated to a lower priority, to be done 'some other time'!

So I spent the whole day here in this vineyard, but in a terribly inefficient manner - I only did 5 rows of about 10 vines. But I did them absolutely beautifully! More like gardening, rather than agricultural labour! I did it this way for a few reasons:

1. The vineyard now looks really beautiful as seen from the gate, so that keeps the owner and neighbours off my back - no more comments on how bad the vineyard look, etc, etc!  I'm used to it by now and I pay no attention, but it's still annoying!

2. A whole day's exclusive pruning is sore on the back muscles, so it's better to do a whole range of different activities that use different muscles

3. It was great fun and immensely satisfying to make such a beautiful 'garden' in the vineyard!

Here's some photos:

Natural State

The photo above (Natural State) shows the vineyard in, errrm, its natural state at this time of year; except for the near foreground, the vines are unpruned and there's lots of dead grass from last year between the rows; and there's new grass growing already, which is quite strange, but not surprising given climate change and generally increasing temperatures. I've even heard news of grapevines budding already - but not in Gredos.

 First Rows

The photo above is of the first few rows of the vineyard as seen from the road. After pruning the vines, I then cut the long grass with a sickle, and then hoed up around around them. I think this is a good idea, as the vines will be able to benefit from 100% of the rain that falls on them, with no competition from the grass and plants. They don't actually need all that water to survive, as their roots are very deep and can find water that the short-rooted plant cannot; and they are hardy drought-resistant varieties anyway. But even so, a little extra competitive advantage won't do them any harm, what?

Then I even raked up all the dead grass between the rows! I don't think there's any good agricultural reason for doing that, but what the hell? I felt like doing it, and the result look quite nice, no? It will be interesting to see if there are any consequences. For example, all the new grass might grow better now that there are no dead leaves and grass in their way. Maybe this spring these first few rows will be overwhelmed by new grass? Has my intervention upset the balance? 

Close-up

Above is a close-up of a pruned vine and its immediate surroundings.

Worm

Above is a lovely worm, evidence of a living healthy and balanced soil. Worms aerate the soil via the tunnels they make, thus helping to protect it from erosion; and they also improve its quality by eating, digesting and exceting it! Go figure!

Healthy balanced soil is very important, because vines can extract from it all the nutrients they need, neither too much not too little, but the perfect amount of each nutrient and micro-nutrient. Industrial-chemically farmed vines produce unbalanced faulty grapes because the soil they live in is biologically dead - it's just a substance that holds the vines upright, and which has an excessive over-abundance of some nutrients and a complete lack of others. There's no way possible to make a complex, interesting, terroir-expressing wine with grapes from that quality of soil. (Enough ranting already - Ed.)

A piece of bad news and really annoying too, is that 'someone' (I'm guessing the owner) took it upon themselves to prune the vines that I had deliberately allowed to climb up the various trees growning in the vineyard. This was so I could make a tiny experimental batch of 'Roman' wine. I haven't spoken to the owner about it yet - I'm letting time pass so I won't be so upset and angry when I do bring the subject up.

The Romans had three systems of grapegrowing: trellised and bush vines which we inherited from them, and also a third method which consisted of letting the vines grow up trees, which we have lost today. Pliny and Columella write about it at length here and here, respectively.

I hope to finish pruning this vineyard soon and make a start on my third, newly acquired, Chelva vineyard here in El Tiemblo.

That just leaves the Carabaña (Airén/Tempranillo) and Villarejo (Malvar) vineyards, but they have interesting issues/complications, ... which is another story!

I've also done some work in the bodega and at my computer, but I'll leave that for another post and another day.

Achieving Things While Pottering About the Bodega and Vineyard

It's amazing. Back in January I started writing down a list of all the things I manage to achieve over time. Before that I just had my usual "to do" lists, which never seemed to get any shorter - the items changed but they stayed the same length, which was kind of depressing as it seemed that I wasn't getting anywhere or achieving anything.

But now I feel great! I can look at my "Achieved in March" list, for example, and I can remember (and feel great about) all those things which I did, but which I would have forgotten about! Easy!

I've even broken the list down into categories, because otherwise I get all confused and overwhelmed! It just goes to show that there really is a lot more to winemaking than just pottering around in the bodega and in the vineyards!

- Bodega
- Vineyards
- Orders delivered
- Samples sent
- Visits attended to
- Tastings gone to
- Paperwork done
- Contacts made
- Other

Well, I won't bore you all any more with this nonsense!  Instead here are some nice photos for you to enjoy, one photo for each of the above categories:

Bodega:

Hundreds of liters of wines bottles up and stored

Vineyards:

Four vineyards pruned: Carabaña, Villarejo, and two in El Tiemblo

Orders delivered:

Un petit pallet pour Paris

Samples sent:

Some samples prepared and ready to be sent

Visits attended to:

Attending to a visitor

Tastings gone to:

Explaining something at Enoteca Barolo

Paperwork:

Bodega books that have to be filled in with numbers

Contacts made:

I have a list of about 25 contacts, just from the Vitis Vinifera tasting in Barcelona the other week (from biz cards and memory jogging) that I ought to follow up. It's on my to-do list, but quite far down on the scale of priorities!

Other:
- I managed to get myself interviewed on Radio Aragon; blah-blah-blah natural wines blah-blah-blah
- I'm working on new labels (again) for next year
- I wrote three posts in March for this blog
- ... and some more trivial stuff.

Any questions, just post it here below, and I'll answer you asap.

How on earth did I manage to achieve all that?

It's been a long time since my last post, and such a lot has lot has happened; so much in fact that I haven't had any time to write any posts on this blog!

That's probably a good thing though, all things considered, as after all, my 'core activities' (as it were) are growing grapes, making wine, and marketing and selling said wine; not writing a blog.  On the other hand though, one could consider writing this blog as part of my marketing!  I suppose it is, really, even though I like doing it just for its own sake.

There's a lot of information in this blog (especially in the "Pages" above), and I get a lot of good feedback about it from many different sources; so I guess I must be doing something right.

So like I said, I've been busy, busy, busy. But in a good sense, not all stressed out and running around madly constantly doing stuff. Like last year!

So here's a quick summary of what I've managed to achieve recently:

1. The pruning. Incredibly I'm on schedule! Usually, if I remember rightly, I'm always running late, some years really, really late, and other years just late! But this year is perfect, so far (touching wood here!). Carabaña (field blend of Airén and Tempranillo) is done; Villarejo (Malvar) is done; my low altitude Garnacha plot in El Tiemblo (Sierra de Gredos) is just under half done, and my high altitude Garnacha plot (also El Tiemblo) is the last one to be started on, in a few weeks.

My half-pruned low-altitude Garnacha vineyard (El Tiemblo, Sierra de Gredos)

2. Bottling. Again, much better than last year, when I had to bottle up madly during the summer to free up tanks before the harvest. This year, I'm about half done already. I just have to bottle up the Airén 14, Doré 14,  Albillo 14 (from an amphora which will be very time-consuming), the Sauv blanc 14 (ditto), and just 1 more barrica of Garnacha.

Bottling up

3. I started beautifying the patio, and preparing a plot of ground to plant some vegetables in.

My rather messy looking patio at the bodega

4. I bought 200 vines to plant in the empty spaces in my Carabaña vineyard (Tempranillo variety, grafted onto Paulsen 1103 rootstock) which I hope to do in April, depending on the temperature and weather

5. I managed to source and buy 2 kg of organic beeswax, so I can line that new baby amphora that I bought on the spur of the moment a few months ago!

6. I prepared and delivered several nice orders (Thierry Puzelat (France), Restaurante Montía (El Escorial), Restaurante Los Asturianos (Madrid), Le Petit Bistrot (Madrid), CienPorCien Natural (Cádiz), Restaurante Bodeguita de Pilar (El Tiemblo), a CSA type group in the mountain village of Bustarviejo)

Boxes, having been prepared, ready to receive bottles of wine, having been corked and labeled

7. Sent off samples to people who were interested in tasting my wines: Barcelona, Vienna, London, Avila, Grenada, Madrid (being discrete here, no names!)

8. Organized some tastings in my bodega with possible importers/buyers (Australia, Norway, Barcelona) and with other people (not possible buyers) who just came to taste because they wanted to (Japan, Boston, Portugal/Belgium, Madrid) (being discrete again here, no names!)

Doing a bit of tasting in the bodega

9. Did a presentation/tasting of my wines in the Petit Bistrot (Madrid) (see this previous post)

10. Went to a Slow Food / Slow Wine event in Zaragoza, to pour my wines, and managed to find a distributor for Aragón, one Carlos Scholderle, #winelover ambassador to Spain. (This two-day event deserves a whole post to itself!)

My table at the Slow Wine tasting, Zaragoza (Aragón)

11. And am in the process of calmly updating the paperwork/redtape/bureaucracy that has to be done if you want to have a legal wine business. Instead of madly doing it the day before the deadlines!

12. And all the while working at my day-job!

 Not bad, eh?  Another new year's resolution was to write down all the things I manage to achieve, which I've been doing. This makes you feel good about your life! Before, I just had the to-do list, which is of course never-ending, but it seemed that I wasn't achieving anything. In fact I was, but I just didn't realize it!!!

Anyway, I hope that wasn't too boring to read through. But it just goes to show that winemaking is not just about being mystical in the vineyard and getting to taste some really interesting wines at tastings! Though of course I love those occasions too, when they occur! There's lots and lots of rather mundane stuff that has to be done, but which is not really photogenic or interesting to write about!

So I think I'll just post this now, without any further ado, and maybe get round to writing some more specific posts next week (or at least before the end of March!)

PS. Just to say that I'll be off to Paris, France this weekend: see here. It's a tasting organized by Thierry Puzelat of all his 'natural wine' producers that he imports into France.

PPS. And also just to say that on Friday 13th, I'll be presenting my wines at Enoteca Barolo (Madrid). 

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!

The World of Wine Comes to Visit

The other day, Wednesday 16th June, the world of wine came to visit me, in the form of José Pastor, a US wine importer (JosePastorSelections) specializing in natural artesanal wines from Spain, accompanied by Keven Clancy (Farm Wine Imports), an import and distribution company based in California, and Chris Barnes (Chambers St. Wines), a natural wine shop in Lower Manhattan, NY.

But the visit really started the night before with an invitation to dinner at Los Asturianos restaurant (c/Vallehermoso, 94; Madrid). In fact, rather than dinner, it was more like a wine tasting accompanied by food. What an experience, to see wine world professionals in action! It took about half-an-hour to sort out the wines we were going to taste, and their order. Some had to be chilled, some had to be decanted, and the rest were lined up at the end of the table. Ordering the food, on the other hand, took about 30 seconds!

We were joined at the last minute by another mysterious (for me!) wine world personality, who came in carrying several bottles and a magnum in his hands and under his arms and who was introduced to me as ‘Victor’.

We tasted a good few wines (sorry, I didn’t take any notes!) for about 1 hr with tapas, including a wine from Méntrida made by the owner of the restaurant, and one from La manchuela made by Victor. Then, when our plate of steamed ‘berberechos’ (cockles) was served it was time to taste my wine, which had chilled nicely by then (Vinos Ambiz, Young White 2009, 100% Airén). JP, my importer, serves it up and says to Victor (who’s been talking 20-to-dozen ever since he sat down):

 “Here, taste this.” So he stops talking and takes a sip,

 “What’s this?” he asks.

 “100% Airén, from Madrid”. Pause. Then “Hmmm, muy buena expression del Airén!”

That means “A very good expression of Airén”. I was pleased of course, but I was even more pleased the next day when I found out who he was! Then, after my 15 seconds of glory, it was back to the previous conversation!

Some of the wines we tasted

So we stayed there for another few hours, tasting and eating, till about 1 o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t keep up with the professionals though: they went on to another place, but I just took a taxi home.

Next morning at 10 o’clock I met JP, KC and CB at their hotel and we drive out to the vineyard. How do they do it? They’ve been ‘on tour’ in Spain for 6 days, eating, drinking and sleeping 4 hours/night!!! What a life, eh?

The vineyard: they liked it because it smells beautifully (thyme, flowers, wild grasses) and because it’s flat! They’ve just come from Galicia and El Bierzo, where they have a lot of slopes!

Jose Pastor in my vineyard

Chris Barnes in my vineyard

Keven Clancy in my vineyard

Another beast in my vineyard!

The bodega (winery): they like the bodega too because it’s so ‘garagiste’ (see pics from previous posts)! Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of wine there for them to taste, as it’s all sold out. But this is what happens:

JP: “And what’s in that tank there?”
Me: “Garnacha 2009 that we’re going to oak”

JP: ”Can we have a taste?”
Me: “Sure, just let me find a clean glass!”

I hadn’t tasted or checked on that Garnacha since before Christmas. I’ve been so busy that I’d actually forgotten it was there and that we were supposed to have oaked it months ago!

So we all taste it, and JP goes crazy! “No way can you oak this!” he says “It would just kill it! The fruit and the freshness would be overwhelmed by the wood!” “How much of that have you got?” So I look inside the stainless steel 700 litre tank and its about ¾ full. “Er, about 500 bottles, I think”

“OK, I’ll buy the lot! Don’t touch it! No sulphur, no racking, no nothing! Just bottle it and send it over!”

What could I say? These guys are expert tasters, whereas even though I can grow grapes and make wine, I’m a hopeless inexperienced taster. In fact, I remember tasting that Garancha before Christmas and thinking “hmm, I hope this improves in the barrel!”. I think the cold temperatures over the Winter have made that wine evolve and improve a lot. It’s now a completely different wine from what it was 6 months ago.

Next we drive back to Madrid for another tasting-with-food at La Cave du Petit (c/Ponzano, 93), a wine shop that specializes in natural and ‘interesting’ wines from Spain and France. Carlos opened the shop specially for us – lucky we called, because he wasn’t going to open that day as Spain were playing football in the World Cup and the streets were empty! Again it took about 30 mins to sort out the wines and 30 secs to sort out the food!! And again, no notes and no photos either! The food was beautiful – all home-made (paté de fois gras, canard no-sé-qué, smelly and non-smelly cheese, etc) and of course a selection of natural wines (including Alfredo Maestro, Josep Garriga, Samuel Cano, Laureano Serres, and many more).

Then we parted ways: I went home for some rest and recovery (!) while they drove up to La Rioja, before going on to Catalonia to Alice Feiring's book presentation. What a life! Just one long party of touring around and eating and drinking, no? They denied that it was like that of course and went on about how hard they work during the rest of the year, but I don’t believe a word of it!!!

Natural Wine Shipment

At last! On Friday 28th May, our pallet of wine (Vinos Ambiz, Young White 2009, 100% Airén, Unfiltered) began its journey to the USA.

It took me two-and-a-half months to do it, counting from the day that importer Jose Pastor came to visit the vineyard and winery and taste the wines (on 11th March).

This is basically what I had to do:

• Design and print a front label and back-label (by Hola Por Que)
• Find a box manufacturer who would sell me ‘only’ 100 boxes (Cartonajes Hurtado)
• Remove labels and wash and disinfect 400 bottles
• Fill and cork and stick on labels and put in boxes
• Find a special US-homologated pallet, (thank you, Vinos Jeromín) stack it and wrap it
• Do the paperwork!

The ship is leaving the Port of Barcelona this Saturday (5th June) and arrives New York about two weeks later, so I assume that by the end of June the wine should be in the shops.

I’m looking forward to following up on the ‘progress’ of the wine down the chain of consumption and interacting with the final customers and/or retailer on blogs and forums, etc.

Here’s some final photos:

Truck backing up to winery gates

Wine moving out

Thank you, Juan, for doing all the hard work, while I swan around taking photos!

Elevator... going up!

Bye-bye wine

III Annual Ecology Day in Lavapiés (Madrid)

This is just a quick post with the photos and videos that I took myself. For more information, comments and photos see the organizer's webpage here: Grupos de Consumo de Lavapiés (in Spanish only).

I've uploaded two videos of the drumming session to YouTube: one is 20 seconds long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1owiWpy_ifc

And the other is seven minutes long!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnVAheoT2hI

And here are the photos:

Setting up the info table

Setting up my own table (Vinos Ambiz)

Pincelada's table (olive oil and wine)

The cheese table

Another table!

Paella being cooked in 'Esto es una Plaza'