The very first 'San Cayetano' wine

We just bottled and corked the first wine from our own vineyard. Although this is something to celebrate my mind is already working on the next wine making cycle, which starts in about 6 weeks from now. One of the reasons why it takes so long to make a good wine is because you can only make it once a year and some wines take many years before they are ready to be consumed. My mistakes however are mainly stupid rookie mistakes. Like the mistake this year where I let the wine oxidize by not placing the lid of the steel barrel rest on the wine, but a few centimeters above it. Because we only had 60 liter of wine this year and the steel barrel can contain 500 liter, there is just about 15 cm of wine in the barrel. The ratio of the air with 20% oxygen and the wine below enabled enough bacteria to grow and affect the taste of the wine. When wine oxidizes it gets a sherry or port taste, which could give it a nice flavor if controlled properly. Some winemakers let the wine oxidize on purpose for this reason and sherry and port are also being oxidized on purpose. But it was certainly not my intention to do this.

So ... what is the quality of our wine ?

It's drinkable and it's not like the Dutch wine writer Nicolaas Klei calls it 'only suitable as a sewer unblocker'. I was personally not sure what to do with the wine, but our test panel gave me enough confidence to bottle it. We cleaned 36 bottles (formerly containing El Coto) and poured the remaining wine in 5 liter water bottles. We filled it up all to the top to exclude any further air to be trapped above the wine which could further enable oxidization.

Name of the wine.

Initially we wanted to name the wine 'La Mina San Cayetano' , but this would either need 2 lines on the label for the name to fit on or the label to run all around the bottle. 'La Mina' was another option, but 'San Cayetano' sounds better. For the first time ever I googled 'San Cayetano' and it proves to be an Italian saint who lived between 1480 and 1547. He was the patron for the unemployed and job seekers. With some fantasy I can now understand why this mine was called after him, but the relation with wine is far away. It would have been better if he would have been the patron for fun and joy or of course of wine. Did you know there are many saints of wine, the most well known ones are : St. Trifon, St. Vincent, St. Morand and St. Urban. Anyway: San Cayetano will be the name of our wine. The label is still 'under construction' so for now we have label-less wine. Paul Schaareman will be designing the label, I will show it once ready (if you need a good designer, I can recommend Paul!).

Want to taste the wine?

You can order it through Amazon, Alibaba and Google Play. No... we invite you to come here and taste it. Retsina tastes best if you drink it in Greece, so drink San Cayetano here on Mallorca, on the 'estate' ;) .

Other news...I just collected an infusion pump - 'yes' the one that they use in hospitals. I want to do an experiment with it by infusing citric acid in the water for the irrigation systems. I will keep you updated.