Radio Shack No Receipt Returns

(translation in English late post of September 9)

Today is September 9 and I'm still recovering from the beating we got on 3, 4 and 5 grape picking and pressing. And last week is that we do not stop to clean and prepare the harvest, as well as moving all of our facilities from our previous location in Ambite to new in Morata de Tajuña. Menudo curro!

First, we had to move all our equipment, from areas with a van. The presses were heavier. And most large, stainless steel tanks of 700 liters. The rest were smaller pieces. We also carry several hundred empty bottles to fill in the future. The hardest thing was to move the 300 liters of wine that we had not gone through the barrel. We fix up an empty tank of 300 liters and pumping the van came to deposit. As we arrived at the new winery so pumped directly into barrel. The move meant

2 to 3 trips a day for 3 days. After each trip we had to clean everything thoroughly. Coincided with the process of negotiating the purchase of 3000 kg of grapes (green) with growers in the area. We had to buy as a result of a decline in our production due to frost caught us in the month of May, which was loaded many of the clusters in Carabaña. To purchase these grapes had to be visiting a few vineyards previously.

harvested in the Tempranillo Carabaña

Box Tempranillo

Food

1 st Harvest (Carabaña)

Friday, 3 picked up our Carabaña Tempranillo. We did it pretty quickly: we were at 7.30 o'clock in the morning (I took the van that was full of baskets she had left clean prepared the day before). For 14 h and had and we managed to finish only 400 kgs. From there we went to the new cellar, downloaded, stemmed and pressed. On this occasion, for the first time we did it by machine. No hand like other years. After clean up and reload the truck clean boxes for work the next day.

2 nd Harvest (Titulcia)

Saturday 4. Curran there indeed! We finally agreed to buy 3,000 kg of grapes and had to be collected in just one day. We calculate, to rough estimates, we could do it with 7 people. This is 50 kgs / person / hour, mean 10 kg / person / hour. Or 12 minutes per basket. And is that paper is patient.

the end we did in the estimated time and collected 3900 kg (3,500 of Shiraz Tempranillo and 400). The scale used to weigh municipal Morata. First weigh the empty truck, and then their weight with the grapes. The difference: the weight of the grapes. Elementary my dear Watson!

Panel municipal balance

was really hard because it was hot as hell. We were attacked on the nerves. We were without water and had to go into town to buy. We calculated 2 liters per person but we fell short.

Endless rows

Tempranillo

Set in stone between rows to conserve moisture.

Tempranillo Clusters

Almost all clusters were like this. Clusters overflowing and looking very healthy.

baskets with grapes waiting to be loaded

Loading ......

Video clip:

Loading boxes of grapes

Eating

under an olive tree

Morata
While driving to the third of the trips, at 3 or 4 in the afternoon (the hottest time of day) I started feeling mystic (I was the head or was dehydrated?). No one was visible in either the road or in villages had to cross, so only the landscape and asphalt that glistened in the heat. Everyone was eating, or sticking a nap. And I said to myself. "What the hell am I doing here in the boonies, in the middle of the central plateau of 40 ° C and driving a van full of grapes? Normal people is watching TV or napping! I guess it was an attack on existentialism or something. Well, the case is past. I'm in shape again.

So we were picking grapes and loading until dusk and returned to Morata. The last task was to put all the grapes on the winery patio to cool off at night and were ready to process the next day. Processing

grapes

The next day we saw the wonder of the mechanization. The new winery is a winery shared "truth." Capacity and equipped with adequate machinery to handle 30,000 kgs. The difference stemmed and pressing to do hands on a machine is different.

manual crusher-stemmer

Destemmer mechanical presser

With this latest machine is doing the same job in a jiffy (comes with an engine electric)


The grapes are dumped into the top, the skins are expelled into the blue box to the right. The juice, skins and seeds are pumped through the yellow hose to the fermentation tank of 700 liters which is in the corner. We finally landed in century 20 (twenty veirntiuno not!)

fermentation tank

A stainless steel tank 3 mounted on pallets and covered with an elegant strip of rubber.

Another novelty in this machine:

A-pallet after

With this little machine can move around 300 kgs of grapes in one sitting! Before we took hours and we stayed with the back waterfall! Now we do it in minutes and happier than a lark!

This is another machine of the 20th century, called "pump"

Bomb

As the name implies, this machine pumps the liquid from one tank to another or from the bottom of a reservoir to the top of it (make overs). This was something we were doing lately. Bazuqueábamos Before this:

Palo to bazuquear

pump for pumping

The pump draws the wine / grape juice through thick hose running from the end of the shell and pumped through the hose snaking closer on the floor next to the tank. And up to fall on the hat of marc floating on the must / wine. (For small deposits continue to do so by hand as before. For depositazo of 3,500 l can not do so and use the pump)

Juan (left) and Fabio (right) feeding the crusher / stemmer

This is Phase 2 of our quality control process. Phase 1 is made in the vineyard, where we ensure that we collect only healthy grapes and do not include leaves, rocks and branches.

In phase 2, one holds the basket while the other pushes the grapes to the press by removing the leaves and branches that still appear in the basket.

The last task after cleaning (it is midnight) is to load the scrapes to the van to take to the vineyards scattered to Carabaña where they decompose and improve soil fertility. (And again I hooked another existential rage) I say "what the hell do I do with a van full of scratches, going to the middle of nowhere at midnight, when I should be sleeping like a normal person!" But as I said, and he passed me .

Scrapes in the vineyard at midnight

Well that's all. Today was a day I have taken off to hang pictures on Facebook. I tweeted something, and I wrote this post. I hope you have enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or criticism, do not hesitate. Here I am.

(Post translated by Ignacio Segovia )