Fiesta organized by BAH-Galapagos

Saturday 20 June was the fiesta organized by BAH-Galapagos along with Didesur, Altrantrán and Ecologistas en Acción in Azuqueca de Henares. There was a market, games for children and lunch cooked by themselves. The idea was to promote the projects and also to help finance a van for BAH-Galapagos.

Neither Juanillo nor I could go unfortunately, but our wine was there.

I don't have any photos showing said wine at the moment, but here's one with a beer drinker and of Juanjo (worker at BAH-Galapagos) at a stall in the market.

Organic Encounters

Saturday 23 May was the 2nd Annual Organic Event day, held in Lavapiés, Madrid. There were lots of activities happening throughout the day: tables with information, sampling of local organic products, street theatre in the plaza, guided tour of the Carrefour supermarket, nice lunch, conferences in the afternoon, and big party in the Solar to finish off with.

We set up a little table where whe gave out our leaflets and free samples of our wine
folletos

For more details on the activites see here:http://www.gruposdeconsumo.blogspot.com (in Spanish only)

Here are some photos:

Crianza 2007 (I)

Last saturday 16 May we bottled the Tinto Crianza 2007. It's 100% Tempranillo and spent 10 months in the American oak barrel that you can see in the photo below:
I think I only spilt about half-a-liter of the precious liquid (and tasted a few glasses for quality-control purposes!). In the end we got 290 bottles, which are now stored here:



We're going to start distributing them at the end of June, so we have time to print and attach the labels. This will be the first time we attach labels to our wine since the project stated 5 years ago. There are exactly 250 bottles available and we're going to number them by hand. The labels are almost ready and the creatives at
Hola Por Qué are working overtime to try and make all that text I sent them fit into a rather small label!

Technical details on the Tinto Crianza 2007:

- Grape variety: 100% Tempranillo
- 10 months in American oak barrel
- 14% vol.
- This wine will definitely improve with age. The bottles should be kept (for at least 1 year) in a place which is dark, quiet, at around 18ºC, with no smells or vibrations. Unfortunately, we can't keep the bottles in the winery over the summer as it gets too hot in there and there's too big a risk of the wine spoiling.

Sneaky tasting session

Last Tuesday 19 May, we did a sneaky, informal, semi-spontaneous wine-tasting session in La Vinícola, a wine bar in Lavapiés/Santa Isabel.

The tasters: 12 usual suspects who habitually meet up in La Vinícola of a Tuesday evening after picking up the organic veg

Raw materials: 2 bottles of the recently-bottled Crianza 2007

Results: animated and quasi-philosphical conversations; we were just about to finish sorting out the world's problems, but they threw us out at 1:00 am!

We forgot to take photos but this can be remedied by leaving a comment, which can be done by clicking on the comentarios link just below :)

Inauguration

Last Wednesday 22 April was the inauguration of a pottery exhibition created by Hola Por Qué and we were invited to provide the wine.

The exhibition was held in a bookstore/coffee house called Democrazy in Chueca, Madrid.

It was a really interesting event for us, good fun, and a good opportunity to promote our wines. I think we'll be doing more of this sort of thing in the future :)

Donkey Day

Last Saturday 25 April was an interesting day in the vineyard in Ambite, based around animal power. People came from Granja Cando (a winery in El Bierzo), from ASZAL, and from ANDREA .

They were going to bring a donkey but they said the vineyard was too big, so in the end they brought a horse instead.

Powerpoint presentation in the morning

Preparing the horse for ploughing

Ploughing in the vineyard

It was a great occasion for networking, chatting about all things ecological, nice lunch, and getting to know each other.

We're thinking about using a horse in the future, to replace the work currently done by a petrol-driven tractor!

Bottle-washing day

Here we can see the "semi-automated bottle-washing line", with a stategically placed bottle on the hydraulic bottle-washer!

We are almost ready to bottle the Crianza 2007. It's spent 10 months in oak and is very good (even if I say so myself!). This weekend we washed over 300 bottles that you've been returning to us these days. Recycling all the way!

When we have an exact date for the bottling, I'll publish it, in case anyone wants to come out to help.


Here are the boxes (also recycled) full of nice clean bottles, ready for filling.

Surprise visit

On Monday 6 April, we received a surprise visit from La Ortiga, an organic produce consumer group from Granada. In the morning we saw the little vineyard in Carabaña and then the two large plots in Ambite (see photos). The on to the winery, where we did some quality control on the different wines. :)