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.

New Bodega - A Bit of Gardening (and Classifying Junk and Scrap)

Do you know how to make your fingers and arms really sore? Easy! Just spend a whole day tidying up the patio of a bodega, grabbing, lifting, carrying and hauling junk and scrap!

This is what one side of the building now looks like:

Nice n tidy!

The stonework is now visible, as before it was covered up with assorted junk and rubbish. I found lots and lots of concrete blocks scattered all over the patio, hidden in the grass, and which I kept, as they may come in useful in the future, and in the meantime maybe I could plant flowers in them! I also kept those big stones.

I separated out the wood (mostly old pallets, but also planks and bits and pieces), which will have to be either burnt or taken to the local "Punto Limpio" (municipal rubbish dump). If we choose to burn it, we'll have to wait till October, as at the present time it's completely forbidden to start fires anywhere (even in the middle of a built-up area) due to the risk of forest fires - of which there have been several already in the neighbourhood, the nearest ones in Cebreros and in Almorox.

Bits of wood - to be got rid of, somehow!

And I also separated out the metal, which hopefully we'll be able to sell to the local scrap merchant.

Scrap metal (1)

Scrap metal (2)

Scrap metal (3)

Yet more scrap metal in a store-room

Then I cut some grass and brambles, and made these piles of leaves, grass and bramble shoots:

Cleaning up the patio

I'd like (one day!) to make a little vegetable garden here. But that will have to wait for next year, as other priorities beckon, ie getting everything ready to make some wine - and the grape harvest is just round the corner. The Albillo harvest is in about a week or two, but I think I'm going to give it a miss this year. I'd rather wait a year and do it properly next year, than rush in and be all stressed out this year. I haven't had time to find a Albillo grower or even look at any Albillo vineyards. So I shall just wait for the Tempranillo and the Airén and the Malvar and the Garnacha, and the Sauvignon Blanc and the Chelva  (which is plenty to be getting on with!) and maybe some other varieties too, which are all in September and October, and so I'll be ready and relaxed :)

I also "saved" a vine that was growing wild in the corner of the patio. I managed to find some nails and some strips of metal, which I hammered into the wall, and trained the vine over them:

Not a very good job so far - I need to set up a system of posts and wires, but again other priorities beckon this year!

I said "saved" in inverted commas, because of course the vine was doing perfectly well without my help. Vines have been around for about 200 million years, while homo sapiens for only about 1/2 a million, and we've only been cultivating grapes and making wine for about 8000 years! So go figure if vines need humans to help them survive!!!

What else? Well I've moved most of my stuff in, though I've still got a few trips to make from the old bodega in Morata de Tajuña. This is what my corner of the new bodega is looking like at the moment:

My winemaking stuff

From left to right:

Old oak barrels (mostly American, but also two French) with the tops taken off, for fermenting. I've been dowsing them with water so that the wooden staves expand and the barrels become watertight (or winetight!). When they're empty, they tend to dry out and gaps appear between the staves.

White plastic fermentation tank, capacity 1000 liters. I've never used plastic before, so this will be a new experience for me this year. I bought two of them second-hand from my friend and fellow natural wine-maker, Alfredo Maestro.

Then, barely visible at the back are two manual basket presses. I'm thinking of buying another manual basket press, but this time a hydraulic one. I think I'll need one because I'm planning on making a lot more wine this year, ie increasing my output from ca 5000 bottles to ca 10000 bottles. And those manual presses are very very s l o w. We shall see.

Then there's another 1000 liter white plastic fermentation tank, and then all my usual stainless steel fermentation tanks, that I've been using for the last ten years: 200, 300, 500 and 700 liters.

Lastly, two old oak barrels, unopened, which I'm going to use for ageing some reds, a Tempranillo and a Garnacha. But first they have to be thoroughly cleaned.

Here's a different view of the same stuff:

The same stuff, seen from above

Now you can see the two amphoras ("tinajas" in Spanish) that I'll be using to make my Malvar 'orange' style wines. I may also buy another larger amphora this year. I'm still looking. The other week I went to see some, with Daniel Ramos (with whom I'm sharing the bodega) but they were asking for too much. Maybe we'll do some negotiating and haggling :)

And lastly, this is the temperature I was greeted by as I got into my car to drive back home after a hard day's gardening and classification of scrap and rubbish:

Luckily I'd parked the car in the shade, otherwise it would have been a bit hot in there :)

New Bodega - A Hot Summer Week

It's been a hot week here in Spain and I've been sweating like a pig all day and every day this last week or so, as I've been doing lots of physical work in the new bodega. But the end is in sight at last. All the important and/or expensive works have been done, and now it's the final bits and pieces:

- The insulation of the doors was the last major task, which we finished the other day.

The front door, insulated

The back door, insulated

And all the other doors (2 side doors and 4 main grape reception doors, all the same size as the above) are insulated too!

The insulation consists of expanded polystyrene panels, which we had to measure, cut up and fit jigsaw puzzle-like to the doors, which are made of thin metal sheets. They got so hot that if they had been horizontal instead of vertical, we could have fried eggs on them.

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Then we put up some gates, for safety reasons. We don't want any children (or adults, for that matter) to go upstairs, and maybe fall down into one of the fermentation tanks, as several of the covers are missing.

Gate - going up

Open holes with 2.5 m drop onto concrete!

Metal grill

All the holes should have covers like in the photo above, but many are missing. it turns out that building was burgled about two years ago and the burglars took about 20 of these covers and sold them for scrap.

Neither do we want anyone to go downstairs, which at the moment is full of old machinery, and assorted junk, apart from the original crusher/destemmer and conveyor belt. It's just too much to clean up at the moment, but eventually we want to turn that space into a museum/expo room using all the old wine stuff we found lying around, and which we've kept.

Gate - going down

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The conveyor belts are going next Monday. We managed to sell them to the local sawmill! Hooray!

Mobile conveyor belt

Fixed conveyor belt

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The other day I put up insect-screens on all the windows:

Window - before

Sheets of netting + silicon

Window - after

There were about 20 windows like the one in the photo above.

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This was lunch one day, in the bodega. Canned olives, canned aubergines, canned sardines, roast peppers in oil, bread, fruit and wine:

Lunch

Vineyards

I've seen three vineyards already, even before finishing the works at the bodega. Once they really are finished, I'll start looking in earnest both for vineyards to take on and also for buying in grapes.

The latest one I saw was this one, which is literally 5 minutes walk from the bodega. The outskirts of the village are now encroaching on it.

Vineyard in El Tiemblo

I really like this vineyard. The owner says he doesn't use any chemicals, and as you can see he doesn't plough up around the vines. The vines look like they are really old, and the grapes look very healthy and vigorous. My only doubt is that the variety is a local white grape called Chelva, which is mainly used as a table grape, and no-one makes wine with it. After asking around for information, the most frequent comment I got was along the lines of "Chelva's rubbish for wine - a bit like Airén" !

This is what Jancis Robinson, José Vouillamoz and Julia Harding have to say about it in their book Wine Grapes:

"Chelva is widely grown in Extremadura, Spain, where it is authorized, among many other varieties, in the Ribera de Guadiana DO. It is also grown, to a much lesser extent, further south in Andalucía, where it is authorized in regional wines such as Vino de la Tierra de Sierra de Alcaraz but not in any of the autonomous community's DOs. There were 7,490 ha (18,508 acres) in Spain in 2008, the vast majority in Extremadura (6,495 ha/16,049 acres), the rest in Castilla-La Mancha (845 ha/2,088 acres) and Castilla y León (150 ha/371 acres).Unusually, Chelva is used both for the table and for wine but most of these hectares are for wine grapes, producing rather neutral wines that generally disappear in blends."

Well!  What can I say!  So I'm going to make a experimental lot of white wine with it. Maybe I'll be able to prove the experts wrong again, like I believe I have done already with my Airén and Malvar, which are also not very highly thought of varieties for making wine with.

Rickety bridge over irrigation channel in the vineyard

Close-up of bunches of Chelva grapes

This is another vineyard I saw. Garnacha this time, and a bit further from the village - about 5 minutes by car.

fotos of 2 garnacha vineyards

Vines not so old, maybe about 30-40 years. The owners has retired and he wants to sell/rent/get rid of his vineyard, or at least sell the grapes this year. I don't know what to do yet. I can't think straight with all these tasks I have to do at the bodega!

I also popped into my own vineyard in Carabaña:

A lot of grass around the vines in Carabaña!

Parts of it are terribly overgrown and wild looking, as I haven't been able to tend to it properly this year due to the new bodega.

This part of the vineyard is not so bad!

But the climate has been favourable, and the vines are looking really healthy. There's lots and lots of grapes this year, and I've even thinned a few clusters from some of the vines, that were especially loaded.

Here's a picture of a vine that's climbing up a plant which I deliberately left growing right next to it:

Vine in Carabaña

New Bodega - The Last Lap

Well, we seem to be getting there - slowly but surely - and we should be ready for the Albillo harvest in mid-August. (Touching wood as I write!)

The list of tasks and works to be done seems to be a lot longer than it was a few months ago (!) but at the same time they all seem a lot more doable.

This is what still has to be done:

- Electrical installation. We can't do this ourselves, and proper qualified electricians are busy working as I write, and they should be finished in about 2 weeks. This is hugely expensive and has blown my budget out of the water, and means that I won't be able to buy in as many grapes as I thought, or buy more equipment and capacity. After getting several estimates, haggling and negotiating on the prices, and reducing the installations to the absolute minimum, we still have to fork out about €8000 !!!!!

All these other tasks we can do ourselves:

- Finish off the painting. There are still a few doors and walls to do.

- Insulate the doors against the heat. The doors are just thin metal plate (from the 1950's) and hardly insulate at all, so we're going to line them with sheets of expandedpolystyrene.

- Buy a foot-operated wash-hand basin. This is a legal requirement.

- Buy a water-heater for the bathroom. This is also a legal requirement.

- Buy and install anti-moquito netting on the windows. This is also a legal requirement.

- Find, buy and install a rubber strip on all the doors, to cover the gap between the ground and the bottom of the door. This is also a legal requirement.

- Install false ceilings in the bathroom and bottling room. This is also a legal requirement.

- Fix the bars/railings on the windows. This is not actually a legal requirement, but needs to be done (to keep burglars out!)

- Call the scrap merchant, for him to take away the two conveyor belts. We tried to sell them to some neighbouring wineries, but no-one wanted them!

- Classify all the other 'scrap' that we found in the bodega (stuff to be sold, stuff to be thrown away, and stuff to be kept in case it comes in useful one day!)

- Tidy up and beautify the patio, or at least make it accessible for vehicles carrying grapes!

- Last but not least, hire a van and take all my equipment, machinery and assorted stuff from the old bodega to the new!

Apart from all of the above tasks, that are directly related to the physical bodega, I also have other things to do:

- Check out local vineyards and grapes, with a view to buying in at harvest time

- Check out and possibly buy some clay amphoras

- Check out and possibly buy some wooden beams, on which to place my oak crianza barrels

- Legal and bureacratic stuff:

   1. Buy all the required books and ledgers that have to be kept by grape-growers and wineries

   2. Design (or have designed) a new name and logo

   3. Design (or have designed) some new labels, to be registered with the Ministry of Agriculture

   4. Look for and contract an insurance policy (fire and theft, etc)

  

- Take some time out to actually define my Wine Plan for this year!

Phew! It's made me tired just writing all those tasks out. Maybe I ought to prioritize and make a proper schedule, instead of just getting on with whichever task takes my fancy on any given day! Whatever!

Anyways, this is all interesting stuff, and it keeps me off the streets! :) I just can't stand the thought of being bored and having to watch TV with all that football, news, reality shows, series, etc. I'd rather watch the paint dry on all those walls and gates that I've painted recently!!!

(photos pending: they're on another computer that I dont have access to right now!)

New Bodega - Refurbishing Work

Here's a quick update on the refurbishing work that we've been doing at the bodega.

It's been a very intense month or so for me, as we're racing against time to have everything by August, for the Albillo harvest.

The biggest jobs were: 1. Scraping and painting the ceiling, and we had to hire a mobile platform to reach the highest points;

Scraping and painting (1)

Scraping and painting (2)

Scraping and painting (3)

Scraping and painting (4)

2. Scrubbing and cleaning the walls of the concrete tanks.

Cleaning concrete tanks (1)

Cleaning concrete tanks (2)

3. Painting the floor of the area where we're going to make the wine, with special washable paint.

...fotos

We did all this by ourselves with the help of friends and family, otherwise the cost would have been too much for our budgets!

We're also installing a bathroom, tidying up the patio, and refurbishing a bottling room, and an office/lab room.

Future bathroom

Future bottling room

Now we have about a month to do all the remaining "minor" tasks. The most time-consuming is the painting. Even if it's not really essential I think it's important from an aesthetic (and psychological) point of view, ie the place will look a lot better when we take visitors there, and the visual impact makes me feel that the place is really mine!

A few weeks ago we had a visit from the inspectors from the Ministry of Health, and they gave us a provisional acceptance, pending certain works, which we have to do now in order to get a definitive permit:

- install false ceilings in the bathroom and bottling room
- install foot-operated wash-hand basins
- install hot water boiler and ventillation grille in the bathroom
- paper-towel dispenser, locks and cupboard in the bathroom
- anti-insect screens in all the windows of the bodega
- fix gaps in main doors

As if that were not enough, we also have to do some other tasks (even though they're not legally required):

- fix bars on windows
- sell conveyor belts, and other scrap
- make patio nice
- set up tasting-room area

Mobile conveyor belt for sale

Non-mobile conveyor belt for sale

Messy patio (1)

Messy patio (2)

And lastly, we have to fix the lighting and power installations. This is going to be hugely expensive and we're still asking for estimates from electricians and looking for ways of cutting down the cost.

All of the above has meant that I haven't been able to tend my vineyards or my wines in the old bodega, or attend to my blogs, interact on FB and Twitter, etc, or go to tastings or events :(

But I can't complain! After all, this is what I've been wanting to do for the last 10 years :)

New Bodega

At last! 

After almost two years of searching I've finally found a bodega that meets all my own criteria, and all the legal and bureaucratic ones too! 

I still can't believe it! But I signed the lease the other day so it must be true!

Signing the contract for the new bodega

I think I’m still in a state of shock or disbelief, in a sort of existential haze, like when you become a parent or buy a new house or get a new job!

But not only that. It's even better! Because the bodega is beyond my wildest dreams! Over the last two years, as time went by, I'd been gradually lowering my expectations, and I'd ended up looking at buildings that were functional but ugly, ie industrial sheds located in horrible areas; and my basic criteria had been reduced to mere functionality, ie a minimum of space, temperature and humidity conditions, and above all licensability, which means legally and officially approved electrical, water, drainage, fire-protection, etc; and I'd forgotten all about aesthetics, visitablity, enjoyment, nice surroundings, etc.

Hence my shock and disbelief. Because the bodega we've found is a historic building right on the main street of a village not too far from Madrid, in the Gredos Mountains, and that actually used to be a cooperative winery until it went bankrupt about 2 years ago.

My New Bodega! - Front view from across the street

Side view

The space is absolutely enormous - it has a capacity of 1.2 Million liters! In the form of concrete tanks ("conos" in Spanish), about 50 of them holding about 20,000 liters each. We'll be like mice in a cathedral, as we're not planning to use any of those tanks this year. We're just going to use our own tiny artisan-sized equipment and make maybe 15,000 liters each, max!

Inside view - ground floor

I've been saying "we" because I'll be sharing the building with fellow winemaker Daniel Ramos (Finca Zerberos) who was in exactly the same position as me, ie looking for a place to call his own and make wine in. In fact it was him who found the building about a month ago. Circumstances threw us together by chance about a year ago at a blind tasting event in Sotillo de la Adrada (see this post from last year); so we got chatting and agreed then to try and find a place together to share the costs.

 

Inside view - upstairs

Now it's a race against time to get the place ready for the harvest, which will be in August for the Albillo grapes! And there's a LOT of work to do, as the building has been empty for two years and is very dirty; and also it doesn't comply with the latest modern legal requirements, as the installations have never been upgraded since 1958 when the co-op was built!

We have to fix the roof, put in a new toilet, paint the ceiling and walls, change the electrical cabinet and wiring, and who knows what else? We’ll find out soon enough when the inspectors from Health & Safety, Social Security, Ministry of Industry, etc come round to check it out!

Yours truly doing a bit of painting

To be continued!  :)