The thermometer onn my car reached 43oC this afternoon. Everything is tinder-dry and forest fires have been breaking out all over Portugal. There have been over 1,000 in the last week, including one here on the serra yesterday afternoon. We have some important visitors here this week, Kris Jeuris (our importer in Belgium) and Jo Locke MW (the buyer for the Wine Society in the UK). They will never believe me when I tell them that we have a realtively cool climate. Perhaps I should send them down to Granja-Amareleja on the other side of the River Guadiana where the temperature apparently reached 52oc earlier this month.      

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The heat has returned and we have temperatures in the high 30s. Driving up from Lisbon yesterday the car thermometer registered 41 degrees centigrade near Ponte de Sor. Last night I went to the birthday party of an English neighbour and when I left at 3.30am the thermometer was still registering 29oC. Tomba Lobos, the excellent little restaurant that we have in the nearby hamlet of Pedra Basta, is closing today and will re-open at the end of August in new premises (formerly O Tarro) in the centre of Portalagre. I had lunch there today, full of saudades after the many good lunches and dinners we have had there over the past five years. It is a loss to our locality and the new location won't be nearly as convenient for us all although the new building is much more suitable for a restaurant with the calibre of Tomba Lobos (one of the few restaurants outside Lisbon and the Algarve to be awarded a 'golden fork' in the 2010 edition of Boa Cama, Boa Mesa).         

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O pintor chegou. ‘The painter has arrived’. In local parlance this means that  the grapes are changing colour and we have veraison in the vineyard. First the Aragonez and now the Trincadeira grapes are just starting to change colour. Earlier in the year we were at least a week behind but now we can expect to be harvesting in the second week of September – about normal. It will be a large crop, our largest yet, not just because of the new vineyards coming on stream but also due to the winter rains and good conditions at the time of flowering. In the Douro they are expecting a record crop of between 303,000 and 360,000 pipes, 100,000 more than last year. This has serious implications as the Port benefício is likely to be around 100,000 pipes leaving two thirds of the crop for unfortified wine. The price of Douro wine is certain to fall with implications for grape growers throughout Portugal.

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After a blast of 40 degree heat at the start of the month, the weather is now thankfully cooler. The vines have weathered well and it looks as though we will  have a large crop this year, especially the Alicante Bouschet. We have just finished our monda (green harvest) with around one third of the Alicante cut to the ground. It would be much better if we could achieve an earlier equilibrium with these vines which consistently overporduce - this is something that I must look at for next year. The Trincadeira is showing rather too much vigour for my liking, the consequence of the wet winter. The barragem is still full but the grass between the vines which we have been mowing this year have now died back. We bottled Pedra Basta 2008 at the end of June and with three weeks in bottle it looks very good indeed: fresh, still marked by the oak but with the balance and finesse we are looking for, more so than the 2007. Almost all the 2007 has now sold so we expect to launch the 2008 in September / October.  

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