Eventually some digital pictures of the vineyards arrive in my in-box and they look brown and bleak and serious with wires stretching up over the horizon. It is more than a bit scary.

The sight of the vineyards in the flesh is startling. They are bigger and more regimented than they looked in the photos; they scour the mountainside and look alien and intrusive. Two rows of wires run along each row between angled metal stakes about 10 vines apart. One day these will be covered with lush growth and heavy bunches of black grapes. We hope.

Manolo and his people have been busy installing the drop-feed irrigation system with its snakes of black tubing branching off from a monster feeder pipe and it is all beginning to look impressive and professional and viable.

The wet spring has done wonders for the vineyard, the stubby little plants of March are gone and in their place are trails of bright green luxuriant growth - some reaching up as far as the first wire of the espalier.

All extracts from White Mules and Mountains; Snapshots of Alpujarran Life. © Ruth Wade 2004