The grape harvest has started in Spain

Ladies and gentlemen…. the grape harvest has started in Spain…. A decrease of about a 20% in the harvest is expected with somewhat irregular quality…. Soon, more news!

As I expected after a very dry season. I would not be surprised if production was off more than 20%

Yep, but the problem is that in some areas there are also some problems of lack of ripeness in the grapes... :-( So, in this case, less quantity seems not to be correlated with more quality ...

Let’s see...

When are the official vintage (quality) declarations made and can they be trusted ?

I don’t know if exist only one procedure to ";classify"; the vintage but I think that the answer is ";no";.... As far as I remember the quality of some DO’s is determined by a panel of tasters.... when the wine arrive to the market.... but some other are qualified by the same staff of the D.O....

Let me put this question in the Spanish side.... and I’ll tell you....