We keep the dry red and sweet wines in oak for 12 months. The contact with the charred wood inside the barril adds vanilla/coconut flavours to the wine. A small percentage of liquid evaporates through the wook in the barrel and every now and again we fill the level up to the brim to avoid oxidisation. 

Garnacha in particular is very sensitive to oxigen and it would spoil the wine. We keep the level up to the rim regularly.

This winter is particularly wet and cold in central Spain, colder than London and with just as much rain. The vines are dormant at present.

We hand picked up the grapes during the last week of September, just before the rain. We brought the grapes to the warehouse-cellar straight away and left them to rest for a few days while all the grapes were collected. 

Once all the grapes were gathered and left to rest for a couple of days, we put them through the de-stemmer. The de-stemmer (see picture) separates the fruit from the stems. 

We feed full bunches of grapes into the machine at the top, the stems and expelled at the bottom and you can see them on the floor on the left hand side of the picture. The fruit and juice (aka the good stuff) goes through a tube and into the container where we want to kick start fermentation. 

The fruit and fruit juice is then left to its on devices. We do not inoculate the wine, instead we let the must ferment with wild yeast found in the air and the ambient of the warehouse/cellar. 

The wild yeast feed on the glucose (sugar) in the must (grape juice) and transform it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process is called alcoholic fermentation, the process by which the sugar levels in the must drop increasing the alcohol content in the wine. 

We measured the juice sugar content on the must at the start, 24-25gr of sugar per 100gr of must. 

For the first couple of days sugar levels remained constant. On the third day however as the yeast thrived, sugar started dropping rapidly at a rate of 3-5gr per day.

Note the pink froth as the bubbles of carbon dioxide (byproduct of the yeast's digestion) raise to the surface. We made two types of wine, a dry red wine and a sweet red fortified wine. 

Our dry red wine contained a mixture of garnacha (70%) and tempranillo (30%) grapes. The must took to fermentation within three days. 

Our sweet wine was a mixture of garnacha (70%) and alarije (30%) grapes and it took an extra day (four in total) to start fermenting in earnest. After two days of relatively fast alcoholic fermentation (six in total) we added an additional third part of grappa. The grappa raises the alcohol levels so that yeasts die and sugar levels stay relatively high (~18%). The resulting wine is sweeter as not all the sugar was consumed and stronger due to the addition of grappa to the mix. 

Had lunch with the boys like we often do on Fridays. Varo and Stacey just bought a wine fridge, David suggested that the wine still ferments even when in the bottle. It got me thinking, it doesn't or at least shouldn't. 

One or two fermentations happen in wine, alcoholic and malolactic. Alcoholic fermentation turns sugar into alcohol. Malolactic fermentation turns malic acid (sharp apple flavours) into malic acid (creamy or milky). 

No further fermentation takes place in the bottle, or at least it shouldn't on most wines. It would develop unwanted flavours (faults) or fizziness. The exception being sparkling wine production, where some sugar is left to achieve a second fermentation in the bottle which gives carbon dioxide (bubbles). 

Having said that, David is correct in that a few processes take place inside the bottle. Bottles are not air tight, miniscule parts of oxigen leave the wine through the cork during aging, almost negligable evaporation. This evaporation diminishes the risk of negative changes in the wine. 

Without oxygen, complex flavours and odours are formed by the interaction between acids and alcohols within the bottle. This process is called esterification. Through esterification sharp acids in young wines are mellowed out while more complex fruit aromas develop. These complex aromas or esters and are naturally present in the essential oils of plants. 

We therefore associate wine flavours and scents with fruit and flower aromas. This is how primary aromas naturally present in wines develop to more complex aromas called bouquet. The term bouquet itself is an analogy to flowers: our senses associate the roundness and complexity (bouquet) of a wine to be more than just the sum of individual (aromas) elements.