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!  :)

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 :)

Hi-ho! Hi-ho! To Fenavin I Went

Three days at a fair like FENAVIN was too much for me! I had a great time (socially and wine-tasting-wise) but it was excessive "work-wise", ie making contacts with importers and distributors, etc. Basically, because my production is so small, I already have all the importers and distributors I need this year anyway! And being nice to people for 8 hrs/day, 3 days in a row was really trying!!! I'd much rather have been alone in my vineyard!!!

Our stand "Caballo de Troya"

(my barrel is the left- most one with the"I'll be back" sign attached)

There were 14 of us who got together to rent a space in common so as to save on expenses; all of us more or less small-ish artisan-type producers of organic and/or natural wines. Each producer had one barrel.

Technically and logistically, everything worked out just fine, thanks to Jose Miguel Márques (Bodega Marenas) who coordinated between us and the fair organizers, and to Julian Ruiz (Esencia Rural) who kindly provided the barrels that we used to display our wines.

Socially, I devirtualized quite a few friends form Twitter and FB, and also made a few that have still to be virtualized!!!

I had a pocketful of visiting cards, but unfortunately have managed to lose them all; and of course now I can't remember the names of all the people who came to taste my wines! But here are some that I do remember:

Nacho Bueno, Spanish wine-blogger; sponsor of one of my oak casks (see this post), and collaborator in the creation of the 2010 coupage "Los Cinco en Punto"

Ignacio Segovia, organizer of The Winebus, running wine-tourism visits to wineries within a radius of about 2 hours from Madrid. Hopefully, he will organize a visit to me, when I have a winery that is 'visitable' one day!!! :)

Sam Caldwell, owner of SMC Fine Wines, who distributes to restaurants and winebars in La Mancha

A trio of Frenchmen (living in Spain): Carlos Campillo, of Petit Bistrot fame, the only winebar/restaurant in Madrid exclusively serving natural wines. Benoit Valée, importer of French and Spanish natural wines, to his new winebar, L'Anima del Vi in Barcelona, and Jean Jacques (surname?) soon to be starting a wine project in Madrid.

Mar Galvan, a professional wine-taster and writer, (for Verema among other publications), who took this photo of me!

Me and my barrel

Mónica Fernández Bobadilla, export manager at Pago Casa del Blanco, came to visit several times a day, so she could step out of her high heels and relax from the very serious and corporate ambiance at her own winery's stand!

who else?...


I have two interesting anecdotes worth mentioning (both involving food and wine! How surprising!):

Tuesday night

After closing up the shop at 7 o'clock (ie, rinsing out wineglasses, tidying up, etc) I was milling around trying to decide what to do for dinner, when my problem was instantly solved by Samuel Cano (fellow natural wine producer, from La Mancha), who'd booked a table for 10 at a restaurant, and invited me along. So we drove to Daimiel (about 20 mins away from Ciudad Real) and parked right next to the restaurant (which is of course impossible to do in Madrid!). It was a low, white-washed, traditional-looking building right in the centre of town, called El Bodegón. Inside, the decor was really nice (ye olde traditional style, tiles, exposed wooden beams, etc). In fact it used to be a bodega, and they'd kept some of the machinery and features for decoration. Downstairs in the basement, they had kept the 'tinajas' (large clay vats for fementing wine) and cut out a doorway into each one; and inside each vat was a table for two!! How romantic is that?

But we had a round table for 10 upstairs. I was expecting some traditional food from La Mancha, ie solid, consistent, no-nonsense energy-giving food, but was I in for a surprise!  It turns out that the restaurant did 'nouvelle cuisine' or 'fusion' or whatever it's called! So we were served plate after plate (I lost count after the 12th!) of intricate and complex delicacies (tiny portions on large plates!). They were all very tasty and interesting, but it's not really my style. It was in fact the first time that I'd had such a 'dining experience'. I'm really glad to have done it, but I don't think I'd do it again, if other options were available! I think we were given special treatment (as Samuel is a friend of the owner!) and we 'only' paid €55 each. This is a huge amount for me to spend on dinner, but on the way out I saw the menu at the front door and noticed that each one of those tiny plates we had cost an average of €20!!!! And we weren't charged for any wine, because we'd all brought our own!

Wednesday night

Action replay at 7 o'clock, milling around, and this time my problem was solved by Roberto (surname?), winemaker at Suertes del Marques (Tenerife). He was going round collecting bottles of wine and inviting people to a paella for dinner at the house he was staying at. Which was in Alcolea de Calatrava, about 20 mins from Ciudad Real. It was a sort of bungalow, with a large back garden and all the infrastructure needed for a barbeque, ie firewood, charcoal, grill, kitchen, table and chairs, etc!

Two paellas were planned (a vegeatable one and seafood one), but unfortunately a Frenchman was in charge of the cooking, and he burnt the first one!! For the record, it was Sebastien (surname?), who makes natural wine in Alicante! But to the important business of the evening: Roberto had managed to collect 28 different bottles of wine, which we all proceeded to taste blind, to see if we could guess at least the variety and the region. Well, I was in the presence of some awsome and experienced expert tasters (like Juan Ponce, Gregory Perez, Mal Galvan, Alfredo Maestro, and more etc), while I couldn't taste my way out of a paper bag, so I was just tasting and listening and learning.

Round about wine #12, I thought that I knew what the wine was, but I didn't dare to speak up, and lo-and-behold, when the bottle was uncovered, I was right - it was an oak-aged Albillo.

Then at around wine #20+, I was pretty sure that it was a Garnacha. The experts were humming-and-hawing and not committing themselves, so this time I just blurted it out. And it was! :)  That just goes to show, that if you practice enough and remember the wines you taste, you really can learn. I managed to identify that Garnacha, because I take every opportunity I can to taste Garnachas, and have been doing so for about three years! Even so, I couldn't identify the region!

Eventually at about midnight, the paella was ready, and it turned out very nicely!

Paella in the making

Then, more wine and wine conversations till about 4:00 a.m. We talked wine for the entire 8 hours that we were there! Amazing! No talk about football, politics, filmstars, or any of that other stuff that people tend to talk about. Absolutely brilliant.

I have to say that I behaved myself admirably, as I was driving. So I actually spat (most of) the wines we tasted blind, and then I stopped drinking altogether after the paella. Which brings me to the last anecdote: I was driving back to our own bungalow (on the other side of Ciudad Real) with Alfredo Maestro, who had promptly fallen asleep as soon as we set off! And he didn't even wake up when I got stopped by the police, and had to furnish documents and explanations!!! They didn't give me a breathalizer test, but I think I would have passed it if they had. So, home and in bed by 5:00 am. Not bad, considering!

Conclusion

Would I go again to a similar fair? Well, for the wining and dining and networking and conversational experiences, yes. But not to sell wine or 'make contacts'!  And I'd think twice about going to a fair for 3 days in a row!

And talking about wining and dining experiences, I'm going to end this post with a rant against Spaniards and Spain in general - because I've been living here long enough, and paying Spanish taxes for long enough, to have the right to complain!!!!  And what I'm complaining about is the absolutely appalling and shameful quality (and quantity) of the catering services provided at Fenavin. They consisted of a large functional cafeteria, of the type you used to see at airports, railway stations and bus-stations. No table service. Only 2 barmen attending hundreds of customers at the bar. I managed to get a beer after about 15 mins (but only because I saw someone I knew getting served and I got him to sneak my order in!). I didn't bother trying to get anything to eat, but went outside instead. Where the situation wasn't any better. There was a street with 4 or five bar/restaurants serving lunch. But did they buy extra food for the 3 days of the fair? Did they put out extra tables? Did they hire a few more waiters, to attend to literally thousands of extra customers from the fair?  No, they didn't! Go figure what's going through the bar owners' and fair organizer's heads, if anything! Oh well. I wasn't too bothered myself, because I'm used to it, but what must foreign visitors be thinking? What kind of an impression would they be taking home with them?

Hi-ho, hi-ho, to Fenavin I go

In a few weeks there's a big wine fair here in Spain, called Fenavin , which I believe is the biggest, most serious, and most commercial wine fair held in Spain, and it'll be full of men dressed in suits!

Fenavin Wine Fair
(photo by El Crisol de Ciudad Real)

"What's that got to do with me or with Vinos Ambiz?" I hear you ask, and in fact I'm asking myself the same thing!!!  Well it's too late to back out now (and I've already paid up!) so I'll be going - on Tue 7th, Wed 8th and Thurs 9th May, in Ciudad Real (La Mancha, Spain).

This is the result of a bright idea over lunch one day last year, when a bunch of winemakers decided what
a cool idea it would be to gatecrash a mainstream, commercial winefair!! So one thing led to another and
here we are!  The name of the group we've registered under is "Caballo de Troya" which means Trojan Horse.

There are now 14 of us and we've taken a big empty space where we will offer our wines, each on our own
barrel or table. We've decided to be minimalist, so we haven't hired a stand or anything. This has the advantage of keeping our costs down, and maybe the importers tasting our wines will be able to focus better on them, without being distracted by fancy decorations and hostesses in short skirts! We didn't even want to put down carpet and just use the raw concrete floor, but the organizers informed us that we weren't allowed to do that!

Alfredo Maestro (Bodegas Maestro Tejero) Ribera de Duero
Charlotte Allen (Almaroja) Zamora
Fabio Bartolomei (Vinos Ambiz) Madrid and Gredos
Friedrich Schatz (Bodega Schatz) Ronda
José Miguel Márquez (Marenas) Cordoba
Juan Pascual (Viña Enebro) Murcia
Julian R. Villanueva (Esencia Rural) Toledo
Manuel and Lorenzo Valenzuela (Barranco Oscuro) Granada
Miguel J. Márquez (Dagon) Valencia
Nicolás Marcos (Dominio del Urogallo) Asturias
Rafa López (Sexto Elemento) Valencia
Ramón Saavedra (Cauzón) Granada
Samuel Cano (Patio) CuencaTodd Blomberg (Benito Santos) Galicia

You can find us here:

Pavilion: NOE
Street: 5
Stand: 11


Now I have even more tasks to do! ... bottling up different wines, sticking on labels, printing out info sheets, printing out business cards, looking for somewhere to stay for 2 nights, etc, etc, ...

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

Labelling (mostly) and Planting a Vineyard in Scotland (maybe)

Last month (Feb 2013) I had to prepare several pallets of different wines to ship to New York and to California, as quickly as possible. I thought I could do it in a few days, but it was slow, slow work, as I had to do it all by hand, not being the owner of any automatic (or even semi-automatic) labelling machinery!

(For details of the wines shipping out, see this previous post/page).

The first step is to make the box:

Boxes and separators (2)



Here (above) you can see the actual boxes, all folded up, and behind them, the separators, which have to be placed inside.

Boxes and separators (2)

Boxes ready to go

Here (above) you can see the boxes made up. The procedure is: Pick up box, open it up, turn upside-down, sticky tape along the seam, and another strip perpendicular.

Then, turn box the right way up, insert the separators, and the boxes are ready.

Bottles of wine

The wine was stored like so (above), in the space between the row of barriques and the wall, which luckily just happend to be about 40 cm! Otherwise I don't know where I could have stored them!

Another shot of the stored bottles (below), also in the barrel room, at 18ºC:

Stored bottles

The labels look like this (below). They are peel-off self-adhesive labels

Labels

Here’s a close-up (below) of the front and back labels for the Titulciano 2010 coupage:

Front and back label

Bottles in the boxes

Pallet on which to stack the boxes

Quality control at lunch

First layer

My friend Monica came out to help me one day. She’s the export manager for Pago Casa del Blanco, one of the only 13 Pagos in all of Spain (Pagos are at the very top of the Spanish wine quality pyramid - above normal D.O.'s and D.O.Ca's)



Monica sticking labels

Very pretty, but is it art?  :)

Planting a Vineyard in Scotland

What? Are you crazy? Yes, considering the evidence and past history, I suppose I must be! I’ve had this crazy idea in my head for years, but finally this year I managed to do a field trip up north to check out the lie of the land. Mainly, I just wanted to eliminate the possibility of planting a vineyard in Scotland, so I could have one less thing to fret about, but (un)fortunately – depending on which way you look at it – my fretting days are not yet over!

We chose a place, more at less at random, but with a few criteria: close to Glasgow (1 or 2 hrs drive), West Coast (less harsh climate than the east coast!), in a possible micro-climate (clue, near a Botanic Garden, of which there are a surprising amount in Scotland!). So we ended up in town of Inverary.

The first stop was the Oyster bar on Loch Fyne, where they serve fresh local oysters from Loch Fyne :).  The presence of this bar had nothing to do with our choice of destination!

Then on to the Botanic Gardens at Crary, where we observed the presence of all sorts of palm trees and other exotic, tropical plants (well, semi-tropical!).

Then back to Inverary itself for lunch, in the George Hotel, for some traditional fare in the form of a pub-lunch. Beautiful building, brilliant beer, but ‘traditional’ Scottish food, ie deep-fried fish and chips – I’d forgotten that it was possible to put much batter on a fish!!!



Anyway, so am I going to plant a vineyard in Scotland? Well, I would certainly like to try! It depends on my circumstances here in Spain! Physically and geographically and climatologically, I think it’s possible. Not easy, but possible. The only thing that worries me is why no-one else has thought of this already!!! You know what I mean? Every time you think you have an original bright idea, you search on Google, and a gazillion hits come up!!! But (worryingly), I could only find one (1) vineyard already planted in Scotland. Here: link. Sorry, I don't have any photos of the stunningly beautiful scenery, and exotic plants around Inverary :(

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.

Focus, focus, focus (on natural wine and other things)

I haven’t been able to post as regularly as I would have liked to recently (over the last few months) for a number of reasons:

Basically I’ve been overwhelmed by events and tasks! Not that I’m complaining. Better to be overwhelmed than to be bored and have to watch TV like I hear normal citizens do!

But now, at last, I’ve managed to do some of the essential tasks that I had to do and am attempting to clear my diary of events, tastings, meetings, distractions, etc so that I can focus, focus, focus on ... looking for a slightly bigger bodega/shed/garage/building/castle/ whatever!

My Master Plan for this year (and the coming years) is to slowly but surely increase both the quantity of wine that I make, and also increase the range of different wines that I make. My ultimate goal is to reach that magical point (tipping point, break-even point, threshold, whatever it’s called) of economic feasibility so that I can leave the day-job I currently have to do, and dedicate myself 100% to grape-growing and wine-making. Having covered the backs of many envelopes with numbers over the years (and quite a few paper tablecloths too) it all boils down to increasing my production to about 50,000 bottles. Which may sound like a lot, but which is in fact considered to be ridiculously tiny in the wine world.

The minor challenge is the physical implementation, ie finding the financing, the building, the machinery, the vineyards, the grapes, etc! That's part is easy, and I’m already on track with all that! The major challenge for me, is how to maintain the artisan quality that I have now, both in the vineyards and in the bodega, as I slowly increase my production. For example, the 2 hectares of vines I have now, I can manage personally and I actually tend each individual vine several times a year; but what happens if I have 4 or 5 ha or even 10 ha one day? Will I be able to care for each vine in the same way?

And in the bodega, dealing with 5,000 litres of wine manually is fine, but what happens when I have to deal with 10,000, then 20,000, and eventually 50,000 litres? I reckon I will have to mechanize certain tasks to a certain extent, but I’m going to be very careful with the use of machinery, especially pumps. Ideally, it would be ideal to just use gravity for moving wine around, but not many bodegas/buildings are designed with that purpose in mind. I think that even the smallest of motor-driven pumps move the wine far too fast and aggressively, and I’m sure the wine gets damaged or altered in some way.

The pump I use at the moment is the tiniest I could find on the market. It cost me €17 in a hardware store and it fits onto the bit of a power drill!

Drill pump

But even this tiny pump can move 2,000 litres of liquid per hour!!! That means I could pump my entire production of wine from one tank to another in 2 hours!! Why do I need to do that when I have all year to move my wine slowly and carefully?

So I’m thinking of buying this pump:

Ye olde pumpe

This pump is over 100 years old (manufactured in the town of Alcoy (Valencia) in 1889), and it still works! A few weeks ago we (the current owner and I) performed a functional test, ie we fitted two hoses to the pump, filled a basin with water, and placed an empty basin at the end of a hose, turned the wheel, and lo and behold, did it not pump all the water out of one basin and into the other!

Am I a Luddute? Or a neo-luddite or whatever it’s called these days? Am I anti-technology? NO, I’m not!!! I have two mobiles, a laptop, a car, and I regularly make use of hi-tech items like elevators, airplanes, and am looking forward to using spacecraft, transporter beams, Culture terminals, cryogenic brain storage, etc as soon as they become available! I believe that technology represents a set of tools to be used as appropriately and as usefully as possible; and I don’t believe that we should be in thrall to technology and just use the latest gizmo available, just because it’s available and somehow deemed ‘better’! A bit of forethought never did anyone any harm, and everyone’s needs and circumstances are different, so why not, in my case, resort to 18th century technology instead of 20th century technology?

Another advantage that this machine has over its more modern counterparts is that its quiet, ie it doesn’t make any noise at all, except for a gentle, soothing whirring sound as the drive-wheels spin. I’ve always hated the horrendous noise made by electric pumps, even the tiny power-drill-driven one I’ve been using. Apart from making me angry and upset, who’s to say that those sound waves don’t affect the wine? Sound waves are used to shatter kidney stones, aren’t they?