The 2017 Marques de Valdueza harvest
A word from Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo
It has been a difficult agricultural year in Spain. We have been very short of rain and July, August and September have been very warm. Olive groves and vineyards have suffered in general and particularly those with no irrigation. Spring was very short and bees had trouble producing our honeys. Luckily we have irrigation both in the olive groves and in the vineyards and we have been able to irrigate with no problem and control the water stress of the plants. The result has been a healthy fruit, as in previous years, but a smaller production both of grapes and olives. There was nothing we could do to help the bees, and the amount of honey produced has been low, especially the heather variety.
The harvest of the grapes started on August 1st. It was complicated because of the temperature, but night harvest, the advanced technology at the winery and the expertise of our enologist helped to avoid the problem and the wines are already aging in our French oak barrels and look really nice.
The harvest of the olives started on October 13th. Still it was warm but the olives were ready to produce Marqués de Valdueza extra virgin olive oil, although the oil yield was low. Somedays at the beginning of the harvest we reached 30 º C. Thanks to the new cooling system that was implanted at the mill last year, we were able to cool the mass and the olive oil throughout all the extraction process, therefore retaining all the aromas and intensity that we look for in our olive oils.
We began harvesting for Marqués de Valdueza and later for Merula. We harvest each variety individually, we extract the olive oil and once we have the four varieties ready and filtered, we decide how to blend them to produce the coupages for Marqués de Valdueza and Merula. This takes time, but we believe that we wouldn’t be able to achieve the quality, balance and complexity of our extra virgin olive oils if we bottled our single varietals. The tasting profiles are in the next paragraphs and all your orders will already be filled with the new harvest.
Thanks are due to the great team that we have on our estate for another great harvest in difficult conditions. I will mention some of them: Juan Manuel is in charge of the olive grove, vineyard, bee hives and other crops; Israel is in charge of the winery, the mill and the little facility where we produce our artisanal wine vinegar; Lourdes is our enologist; Javier Hidalgo is an expert in olive oil irrigation and last but not least Mari Paz Aguilera, a very well respected Spanish olive oil expert, professional taster and member of the Spanish tasting panel of the Minister of Agriculture.
With my best wishes,
Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo