A CHANGE OF SEASON

Our long summer drought ended last week in spectacular fashion with a storm so violent that it was almost as bad as the one which hit us almost exactly a year ago and which, in its two hour duration, destroyed features of the landscape which had been here for centuries. Whereas, this time, the force of the storm was not so great, the amount of rain which fell during it was unbelievable; such was its volume that anyone standing underneath it would certainly have been washed away, together with the giant boulders, trees and other debris which cascaded down the mountains and ended up in the swollen torrent of the river Toba.
It took us the entire weekend to clean up after the deluge, mud being the biggest problem. Our vegetable garden was completely destroyed but, since October is the time for digging up summer crops, such as tomatoes and peppers, and putting in winter lettuces, sowing parsnips, beetroot and so on, it wasn’t too much of a disaster. However, we lost a good deal of this year’s olive crop and many of those remaining on the trees were bruised by the huge hailstones which descended at the height of the storm. For those whose crops are their living it is much more serious, of course. Some growers were able to retrieve some of the almonds which the storm had stripped from the trees but, in most cases, they had been washed away in a tidal wave of mud.
This is the time for harvesting the grapes and making wine. Fortunately, the netting with which we had covered our vines to deter marauding foxes, wild boar and birds protected the grapes quite well from the damaging effects of the hailstones and we had a satisfactory crop. After we’d picked them, we laid the bunches on a table outside for a couple of days so that the sun could dry them and intensify the flavour by increasing the sugar and resulting alcohol content. The next step was to break them up in order to prepare them for the final pressing and for this an impressive piece of apparatus resembling a giant mincing machine is used. Once the juice has been extracted by the wine-press it is poured into wooden casks and left to ferment for forty days after which time it is ready to drink. The grapes most commonly grown in our area are the muscatel variety but to improve the colour of the wine the juice of small, sweet red grapes is often added. The making of mosto (village wine) is a serious business and there is an element of competition, everyone thinking that theirs is the best. Certainly, it is always very pleasant to drink, especially when young, and it is also very pure, being free of additives, and rich in antioxidants. However, the seemingly innocuous sweetness and fruitiness of its flavour are deceptive: mosto is very potent indeed!
We were told an amusing anecdote about a neighbour who had stored his grape harvest in a shed but had not closed the door properly afterwards. When he returned to press the grapes, he discovered that they had all been eaten and the culprit, a jabali (wild boar) was lying on the ground asleep, quite intoxicated.
The weather settled again after the storm and we enjoyed days of warm sunshine and cloudless skies with hardly a breath of wind. There was a rain-washed purity and a softness in the air after the fierce heat of summer and from our cortijo which overlooks the village and the surrounding mountain panorama there was such a tranquility about the scene below us that it was hard to imagine it had been so recently subjected to a storm of such ferocity. The light this time of year is particularly beautiful and, for me, one of the joys of living here is being able to stand on my terrace with my morning coffee watching the sun rise over the mountains, the first rays illuminating the distant sierras with the loveliest, most delicate shades of blue and violet.
This time of year is very good for birdwatching because all the migratory species are in transit. Our swallows departed a few days ago, followed soon afterwards by the bee eaters. They do an excellent job of keeping irritating insects at bay and now that they’ve gone, suddenly we find that we’re being plagued by flies when we sit on the terrace. We shall be really pleased to see them back again next spring.