Live life with fine Spanish wines

My husband and I met Miguel Merino by pure coincidence about 5 years ago. We were taking my parents to Rioja for the first time. Since they love wine (especially the high quality stuff…) we had done some proper research and we were planning to go to Finca Allende in the lovely little village of Briones in Rioja Alta. This winery makes extraordinary wines and we were all very eager to see the winery and maybe get a glimpse of the wine maker himself and of course to buy some wines!

We took off early on a Saturday morning and on our way there (about 1 hours drive from Bilbao) we called the winery to let them know that we where coming. After having visited wineries in France, Germany, Italy, California and South Africa before coming to Spain we thought that it would be more than enough to secure an open door. No answer, so we figured they were working in the winery and couldn’t hear the phone. But when we arrived to the bodega there was nobody to open the door. So there we stood, all dressed up and nowhere to go.
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Having your own business can be very hard. There are some ups and downs. But today we are very happy and proud.

Today two of our wines have been launched at the Swedish monopoly!

The process started ages ago…can’t even remember when but probably about a year ago. Many samples and emails later these great Spanish wines are finally available to all Swedes.

The process to sell wines in Sweden is highly regulated and quite complicated. It starts off with offers that are released monthly or bi-monthly. The offers are very detailed. They specify what grape, vintage, ageing, area and price they are looking for. If you manage to get through that, your wines are exposed to extensive tastings where at the end there can only be one winner. Read the rest of this entry »

I have just moved back to my home country Sweden after 13 years abroad, the last five of them in Spain. While doing my wine shopping here (of course only at the state monopoly stores – “Systembolaget”…) I’ve been observing what people are buying.
by robotSkirt
And it seems that every man and his dog is buying their wine not in bottles but in big carton boxes! An astounding 65% of all wine in Sweden is bought in 3-litre Bag-In-Boxes (BIB).

I cannot recall ever seeing a BIB in Spain during the five years I lived there. So why are the Swedes embracing this package so whole-heartedly? There are many reasons; the main ones seem to be that it is cheaper and more practical. The fact that you can also drink more without it being noticed is most probably also a reason…. There is something more obvious in opening another bottle of wine compared to just turn the tap once more. Read the rest of this entry »

As mentioned in a previous posting, I had put my name down to attend the European Wine Bloggers Conference which was held in La Rioja this past weekend. I duly went to the Conference and what a conference it was! No conference I have ever been to before has involved so much eating, drinking and general fun. It’s a hard job but hey someone has to do it!
photo by Ryan Opaz
There were about 40 people at this conference, from several different countries including Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, the US and Canada, the UK and, of course, Spain. Not everyone is actually a blogger but everyone has some in interest in blogging, whether it is for research purposes or an intention to start blogging.

This other common theme is that all the attendees have a love of wine. We were very fortunate to be able to sample a tremendous selection over the weekend, principally of Spanish wines, but also from other countries.

Apart from the fun stuff there was also a lot of discussion about various issues relating to wine blogging including rating systems for wine, money-making (or lack of it!) in blogging and general aspects of wine and blog writing. I met a lot of great people who have filled me with inspiration and ideas to try and improve our blog and also our retail site.

Over the next few weeks I intend to write more about the topics covered, the wineries visited and the wines we tasted but, in the meantime, anyone interested in knowing more can check out the EWBC site, take a look at the photos on Flickr or view the videos and interviews with attendees on VinusTV.

Ane Miren

This weekend it’s all happening. What we have been waiting and waiting for, over the last 6 months.
The European wine blogger conference! This is the first of its kind event, read more about the event here.

For those of you who would like to be in Rioja but can not, we would like to tell you how you can follow along from where ever you are this weekend. First up you will be able to follow EWBC live blogging on Friday and Saturday at this address: http://ewbc2008.wineblogger.info/ewbc-live-blog-straight-from-logrono-to-you/Join in and tell them and us what you think!

Secondly VinusTV.es will be recording all the sessions and events. If all works out you’ll be able to follow along at http://vinustv.es

We are looking forward to this weekend, and will of course be back here with lots of photos and hopefully some news and inspiration to share with you!

SaludosThe girls at Excelwines

Many different studies have proven that women out-perform men when it comes to smell sensitivity.

Some say it dates back to the cave women having to smell whose child was whose and some say female sex hormones have a role to play. I believe some women can have better smell sensitivity because we have been training our nose from a young age. From scented stickers and pens at the age of 3 or 4, picking flowers for mum at the age of 5, then the toy lipsticks and nail polish with different flavours and smells, then body lotions, deodorants, hairspray, and lip gloss etc etc… Choosing a perfume (my God I could be with my girlfriends in a perfume shop for hours trying every single bottle probably 10 times). Then the whole baby thing when you where in a kind of coma just sniffing the baby all day long. This is hard training for your nose.

The other day I read an article which stated that experts believe that women are naturally attracted to men with immune system genes different to their own, and that they use their smell to detect this.

Well, the article is really about that The Pill leads women to choose the wrong partners, and the role that smelling has in the process. But when I read how important the smell is for women when it comes to choosing a partner I once again started thinking about all the women entering the, until recently, very male dominated world of wine. From wine critics (Jancis Robinson) to wine producers (see below) to wine sellers/bloggers as ourselves. Is it only coincidences that I often find women produced wines to be more subtle and elegant than many of their male competitors?

In Spain it is getting more and more common with female wine producers and the last years some of them have started to produce world-class wines.

My all time favourites are Victoria Benevides from Elias Mora in Toro and Victoria Pariente from José Pariente in Rueda. They used to be –Dos Victorias – but have recently split and are now working separately.

“In 1998, two oenologists—Victoria Pariente (a chemist) and Victoria Benavides (an agriculturist)—decided to set up a small winery in Rueda and the very first product they placed on the market was soon seen to be one of Spain’s best white wines. It is José Pariente, made from the local Verdejo variety, and named after the first Victoria’s father who used to own a small bodega while also running the much-loved “España” bar in the town of Rueda. José Pariente is a wine offering marked typicity, and is first in a new generation of Rueda wines that give full expression to the Verdejo grapes.
After their success in Rueda, these two winemakers almost immediately felt the need to make red wines. They chose the district of San Román de Hornija (Valladolid) within the Toro DO, and soon another great label appeared - Elías Mora, named in honour of a friend of theirs, the former owner of the Castilian vineyards that he had tended for 40 years. This Toro wine is also based on a native variety, Tinta de Toro, and is a powerful, fleshy drink with good tannins and excellent fruitiness.”

- Wines from Spain

They both make world-class wines and if you haven’t tried them you have definitely missed out on some of the best wines from Spain.

2 other favourite girls in the Spanish wine business:

Rosalia Molina at AltoLandon (D.O. Manchuela)
Rosalia Molina looked for a place where the conditions for the vineyard were “special” mainly considering the climate changes and that’s how she chose to set up the vineyard AltoLandon in Landete at 1050 meters of altitude. She experiments with a great variety of grapes; Malbec, Syrah, Grenache, Merlot, Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay
The wines she produces are elegant but intense both in color and aroma. The AltoLAndon tinto is the best one she makes. With mainly syrah and merlot it has a very deep, intense red almost black color, in mouth you sense black berries/fruit such as blueberries, black currant and plums. Over all it is a “spicy” wine with liquorice and berries. The fruit and oak is beautifully integrated. Powerful but with soft tannins there’s something very special with Rosalias wine.

Sara Perez at Orbita Venus (D.O Montsant)

“Sara Pérez is the bright continuator of the great vinicultural legacy of her father, José Luis Pérez, biologist, self-taught oenologist, one of the most respected and followed voices of the wine world, owner of Mas Martinet in the Priorat.
“I owe everything to my father: the direct knowledge that he has given to me and the strength that he has transmitted to me, as well as the respect for what is different, for other ways of thinking and working, and, above all, the sense of freedom to discover my own path”, declares Sara.
A personal path that has lead her to begin her own adventure, La Universal, in Montsant. “Founding my own winery has been the natural result of this personal freedom”, she adds. “The time came when I needed to experience, to learn and to make mistakes without the valuable help of my father”.
Cutting the umbilical cord meant moving away from the Priorat, where she was born, and choosing an area that would allow her to start from scratch “without comparisons or measurements”.”

- Continue to read about Sara Perez at wines from Spain
Enjoy the wines,

Anna

I really love living in Spain. There are so many things that are almost like back home (in my case, back home is Sweden), but then again so many things that are not. An example of the latter is Bullfighting Football.

I live in Getxo, a nice part of greater Bilbao that looks over a bay with a decent beach and an old fishing port, originally enough called Puerto Viejo. Every year the second week of August is fiesta week in Puerto Viejo.

The old port has years ago silted up and is no longer useful as a fishing port since half the time it is dry as a bone and more resembles a beach than a port. This is what makes it perfect for an activity that take place during the Puerto Viejo fiestas: Bullfighting Football.

The harbor is dry about half the time and then more resembles a beach than a port; it’s a sand pitch of about 25×30 meters. The locals form 5-man teams and play each other in a tournament. Each team consists of quite drunk and/or severely hangover (usually both) young men. To make the game a bit more interesting there is also a bull roaming around in the pitch… He is not fully grown but he is big and he is fast. There is a man holding the bull on a long leash but this man never seems overly concerned about the heath of the young footballers. Maybe he has got teenage daughters and sees every incapacitated young man one less threat to his daughters´ virginity. Anyway, most of the time the bull is on a very loose leash.

The first part of the game the young men are usually quite wary about the bull but as the game goes on their attention turn from the bull to the game. After all, they are playing in front of hundreds of beautiful girls from the neighborhood. And then the young men go flying….

Time and time again one of them will be hit by the bull. Amazingly enough they almost always walk away from a bull attack. But every now and then one of them will get hit so bad that he needs medical attention. The record of one day of Football Bullfighting I have recorded so far is from the fiesta of 2006 when we from our balcony could count to 5 ambulances leaving the pit with a brave but reckless footballer…

Now, that’s a sport you probably wouldn’t see in many other parts of the civilized world.

Fredrik

All photos by Natasha Seymour

In Vizcaya, Spain, people eat a lot of fish and they all seem to know a lot about fish (at least they all have strict opinions about it) and when I say fish I mean all sorts of fish, they all seem to have a recipe for any fish you mention.

In Sweden we also eat a lot of fish but our staple fish is salmon, and cod (nowadays of course the cod is not so easy accessible due to overfishing. This basically leaves us with the salmon). I used to buy ready-made filets from the fish counter at the supermarket; you never saw the heads or the tails.

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This time last year, I would not have even considered writing a wine blog but thanks to the increasing number of customers at Excel Wines, and the persuasive powers of my colleagues Anna and Sandy, that since last April we have been doing exactly that. We still feel like novices and we realise that we have a long way to go before our blog is the polished and professional site that we woud like is to be.

Hence, I will be attending the first ever European Wine Bloggers Conference to be held in La Rioja at the end of August. It is being organised by Gabriella and Ryan Opaz of Catavino.net and Robert MacIntosh of The Wine Conversation. I hope to meet other wine bloggers, share experiences and, above all, learn, learn, learn all I possibly can.
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Now that the summer is here I like to enjoy a glass or two of rosé wine. Personally I like them when they’re not too meek and mild but with a bit more character. This summer I’ve been enjoying Tombu Rosé 2007 by Dominio DosTares. But no matter where I am the reaction when I pop open a bottle of rosé is quite often the same; there seems to be a notion that a man drinking rosé wine is a bit, well, suspicious. Usually my friends and family are very liberal-minded but when it comes to pink wine a lot of them seem to be stuck with values from a bygone era.

In all honesty, not all people around me are as dismissive of the stuff. One of my best friends, John, is quite a manly guy and he doesn’t frown upon rosé wine. I have been using this as proof; if a good ole boy from Madison, Indiana likes rosé it has to be OK for any man to drink it. Read the rest of this entry »