Relentless rain, but fortunately it is still abnormally cold (5oC this morning) so vegetative is limited. My worry is that we will go from straight winter to summer and that weeds will explode into life. I want to reduce our use of herbicides this year by mowing in between the rows but unfortunately we still have too much stone lying in the vineyard (Pedra Basta!). At the moment the ground is just too waterlogged for any machinery to venture out into the vineyard. So we just sit and wait for the rain to stop.          

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It has taken nearly two months to prune the vineyard this year. The weather has been so wet that our team of eight pruners have not been able to get into the vineyard for days, sometimes a week at a time. The rain has been relentless since early December. Streams are full to overflowing, and the barragem on the Quinta is overflowing. There is water standing in the vineyard where I have never seen it before – everything is saturated. It has been the wettest winter in Lisbon since 1860 (where the records go back that far) and Madeira received nearly 500mm in just one month with devastating consequences. I was in the supermarket yesterday and all customers are being asked to round up their bills at the check out to support the victims of the flooding in Madeira. Locally I notice that many of the roads are cracking up. Signs have appeared, many of them looking ominously permanent, with the warning piso em mau estado (surface in a bad state). It is hard to see how the local authorities are going to find the money to repair all the roads built with EU support in the early 1990s. A few tiles have been blown off the roof of the adega and water is gushing out of the rockface in the cellar so it looks as though I will have to spend some money. More rain is forecast tomorrow and again later in the week. There is no let up from this miserable winter.           

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I hear that Tim Atkin is the latest victim of the recession, downsizing, dumbing down - call it what-you-will. Tim is one of the UKs more readable wine writers and his weekly column in the Observer was always worth taking in. Now it is to be reduced to a handful of wine recommendations aka the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph who have also dispensed with their regular columnists.  But as poacher turned gained keeper I am not sure if anyone is really listening to wine writers (or politicians) in the UK. With the exception of Jancis Robinson’s erudite and lively column in the FT, I have never found that anyone takes notice of the recommendations or wine scribes. Whenever Pedra Basta is recommended in the UK press I try to monitor the sales uplift and it seems to be virtually nil.  An excellent write-up in a leading regional newspaper led to the direct sale of one bottle! But as a wine producer I am always grateful for any product endorsement and delight in reprinting and reproducing any praise for our wine. So wine writers, please keep writing if only to instil reassurance and confidence in wine makers – just one good tasting note makes us all very happy.   

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Since my January detox I have reduced my consumption of alcohol considerably and almost totally cut out sugar apart from its natural manifestation in healthy cool climate fruit: apples, pears, blueberries, raspberries. I found that my taste has changed and that anything with sugar, especially if I sample processed foods like my children’s breakfast cereal, now tastes incredibly sweet. This also applies to wine where I have become super-sensitive to residual sugar when I taste. I always disliked the residual sugar in certain New World wines, considering it a fraud. Now I loathe it.  Any remotely artificial taste now hangs around on my palate all day as I found when I ate a muffin at Café Nero. Port tastes violently sweet and tannins, when only slightly under-ripe, taste very bitter as I found yesterday when I drank a glass of 2007 Douro red. We will soon be blending the 2008 Pedra Basta so I will have to attune my taste or compensate for this. But for all this I feel better than ever! 

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To London and the annual portfolio tasting of our UK distributors Richards Walford. This is always a good event for us as we meet our existing customers and potential new customers although the number attending was down a little on last year due to the bad weather. One person who had made it was Charlie Allen. She used to work for Richards Walford but has now migrated to Spain where she has become a wine producer. Her wine, called Pirita, comes from the Arribes region. I must admit that I had never heard of the denomination until I realised that I had been to Fermoselle the main town in the area. It is located on the other side of what the Portuguese call, rather grandly, the  'Douro Internacional'. Known over there as Carlota, the locals think she is crazy (which she probably is) and refused to say anything nice to her for at least a year. She has overcome this by giving them as good as she gets and now commands a certain respect – it is so different in Portugal! Charlie has rented 14 hectares of old vines (average age 75 years), all interplanted with the traditional grapes in the region: mostly a variety called Juan Garcia but also Rufete, Bruñal, Tinta Madrid, Bastadillo Chico, Bastardillo Serrano, Tinta Jeromo, Gajo Arroba, Verdejo Corado and the inevitable Tempranillo. Yields, as you might expect from these old vines, are very low (10 hl/ha). Pirita 2007 was placed next to Pedra Basta 2007 at the tasting so I tasted it a number of times during the day. Initially quite austere with crunchy mountain fruit and strong tannins, it opened up during the day to reveal its true character: strong but scented with minerality and structure, finely tuned and balanced despite its 14.5% alcohol. I left the tasting full of admiration for Charlie and her wine.

Location: The Baltic Restaurant, London SE1
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