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Iker Ugalde. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

It is grape harvest time in the Basque Country. Txakolin wine producers sample their grapes to check acidity levels, sugar content, and three or four other parameters, in search of optimal fruit maturity.

Home winemaking was once customary in our country. Most farmhouses would keep some vines, on orchard and field margins, typically, or in rows between cultivated fields, to make the so-called txakolina — a slightly sparkling, dry white wine— for their own consumption. A quarter of a century ago there would be just over a dozen hectares of vineyards in Bizkaia; today there are more than four hundred. (more…)