This vintage will be noteworthy for the hail. We will always remember that first Sunday in June when while we were doing the racking in the cellar, we began to see the hail stones falling through the window, intense, with water, and very hard … and on the return to Valencia, in the car , you always have the illusion that it was not so much after all … but if it was … it was devastating, especially in the part of Alborea that looks towards the Cabriel, where we have a large part of our Bobal grapes (40%) … there was not even a leaf, or almost even branches. We had never seen such a thing before, much less felt it in real time in the flesh.
But well, like the vineyard, after a few days of mourning and weeping (and doubting if we were even going to prune the vineyard), we set to work to help the hail damaged vineyards recover, and work the rest of the plots to produce the wines of 2017 .
The 2017 vintage began with a rainy autumn and a cold winter, with a brutal snowfall in January, which augured a great year, because as they say in the town, the ‘vineyard needs to be set during winter’ to complete a good ripening cycle during summer. And so it was, the plots that were saved from the hail stones vegetated beautifully and matured even better, with balanced grapes and full of fruit at harvest.
Another aspect to consider, was the precocity of the harvest, because after that rainy winter and following the hail storm in June, it did not rain again until well into the winter of 2018, which caused the critical ripening cycle to advance. Luckily we were paying attention to this, and did not get caught by the horns of the bull … we were able to harvest at the optimum moment.
Regarding the level of the wines, this year, due to the drought, we encountered more concentration, one more percentage point of alcohol, and a little less acidity than in 2016. But the level of fruit was simply spectacular. The results from winemaking with whole bunch enchanted us, above all for the wine ¿y tú de quién eres?
