No rain in Spain in 2011

The word most often used by the people I talked to when discussing the 2011 vintage in Spain was dry. It was a dry year indeed, and in many cases early, breaking some records for earliest harvest dates.  Marqués de Valdueza in Badajoz, for instance, harvested their Merlot (and why on earth do they have Merlot in Badajoz on the border with Alentejo, I wonder?) at the end of July! It is of course both difficult and unfair to generalise as the country is so big, and weather conditions, soils, altitudes, grape varieties and so on differ a lot...