The grapes are in!

    It's been a busy few weeks since Bill and Kathy left. We harvested my vineyards on September 28th. As you can see, it was a beautiful day. Harvest has been a little later this year but we had 10 days or so of Indian summer that brought things right along. My friends in La Figuera are already finished and this is the earliest finish for them I can remember.

   The chemistry looked good. The fruit came in at 24.7 Brix or, as they say here, 14.2% potential alcohol. I'm not sure why these folks continue to use potential alcohol because it's basically meaningless. It doesn't take into account the various conversion rates of different fermentations or the possibility the fermentation doesn't take the sugar to zero grams per liter. Oh, well. 

   We had some uneven ripening and a little dehydration. as usual, but the numbers looked good overall. Marc brought a stellar crew once again and they picked a metric ton apiece. This year it was mostly Romanians. I'm VERY happy to be finished!

   Last Sunday there was a Festa at the Ajuntament (City Hall). It was organized by some of the younger chicos in town to commemorate last year's vote for independence. Francesc invited me to come with his mom and sister. The chicos were grilling sausage and pork chops for lunch.

   When we arrived, there was a cloud of greasy, delicious, savory smoke drifting over the crowd. The chicos were playing loud Catalan hip-hop over the PA system. I don't listen to much hip-hop but it frequently has random background noise behind the "music". This music had a background that sounded like a car alarm (or so I thought).

   It turned out to be the smoke alarm inside the Ajuntament. The place had filled up with smoke from the grill and there was more on the way. I went over and closed the doors in order to muffle the racket. The smoke eventually dissipated as we sat down to lunch and the alarm stopped.

   The food was excellent! These folks make really good sausage. In addition to longanissa, there was butifarra. Butifarra is blood and onion sausage. I usually don't care for it but this type was really good. Please see the photos below.

   There was a good crowd and all the usual suspects were there. Shortly after lunch, some of us went into a meat coma. I had to go home and lie down. Thanks for tuning in!

   

   

                                                     Marc Tost supervising the harvest

         This is what professional grape picking looks like. Notice that they left all the second crop.

                                                                Beauty!

                                   If this photo looks hazy, it's because of all the smoke!

                                       Francesc with the Astros t-shirt I gave him. He wears it well!

The man you see on the left is Jaume. He's a black belt grape grower for Alvaro Palacios and has vineyards in Priorat. According to Francesc, Jaume can grow anything. I ran into Jaume in front of the Cooperativa a couple of weeks ago. He had a box of homegrown onions some of which were almost the size of an American football. He has a wonderful family and is always very pleasant.

Let's face it. I'm not very good at food porn. The food was so good and I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture until this point. What's left of the butifarra is in the upper right corner.

                                                   The beginning of a meat coma.

Francesc' sister, Pinyeres, at far right in the yellow blouse. She organized the logistics of the meal. Pinyeres is a professor of language and a wonderful person all around. She and Francesc take turns caring for their mom, Maria.

                              Crystal blue sky over Carrer Major. A blessed day in paradise!