Live life with fine Spanish wines

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. (more…)

Last weekend we went to the Pyrenees and were unfortunate enough to get some poor weather. Friday was a scorching, hot day but the wind picked up in the evening and it rained hard overnight. The next morning it was overcast and pretty cool but at least it wasn’t raining. We went out at about 9:30 in the morning and came back to the house at about 11 o’clock.

It started raining again at lunchtime and we didn’t venture out again until it stopped at about 5 pm. As soon as we stepped out the door, we were hit by the cold air. The temperature had dropped dramatically over the previous hours and it was now positively COLD.

Then we noticed that one of the mountains that can be seen from our house, the Peña Collarada, had a dusting of snow at the peak! On the 12th of July!! This is sunny Spain – how can it snow in July? No doubt there have been other years when it has snowed in July and possibly even August but we couldn’t believe it. We had brought our swimming gear with us expecting to go to the pool and nobody had more than a light jacket. (more…)

I remember when just hearing the phrase ”Rhone wine” would get me salivating. The reds would perhaps get me going more than the whites but I used to love the white ones as well. Those were in the day when France to some extent still was synonymous with QUALITY wine. Slowly but surely, however, France’s grip on me, and many others, loosened and I started to enjoy the Rhone Viogniers (basically the only white Rhone wine I used to go for) more and more infrequently.

The last really memorable occasion was probably six or seven years ago when a friend, after a couple of drinks at a dinner party, casually opened a Chateau Grillet and generously poured it into any glass that happened to be close by. It was unfortunately not chilled enough but was still a beautiful wine, probably around 4-5 years old, and all that you would expect from a wine with such a famous name. (more…)

I have a terrible confession to make: I have never had a North American wine!

I have tried wines from all over the world, both old world and new world, from Spain, France, New Zealand, Chile, Bulgaria, you name it…. I’ve even had Chinese wine. But I’ve never, ever tried a bottle from the U.S.

I think I’ve been living in Spain for too long. It’s so hard here to find anything other than Spanish wines that we rarely drink anything else. You can, of course, go to wine shops which will have a handful of foreign wines, mostly French, a couple of Argentinean / Chilean wines and maybe a New Zealand or Australian bottle or two and that’s about it. If the wine shop owner is really adventurous there just might even be a solitary South African bottle somewhere in the shop. In addition to the lack of selection, there’s the problem of price: these wines won’t be cheap. (more…)

We regularly have clients asking us what the difference is between a Denominación de Origen / Denomination of Origin (D.O.) and a Denominación de Origin Calificada / Qualified Denomination of Origin (D.O.Ca.). The short answer is that the D.O.Ca. is a higher category for the truly great wine-making areas. There are currently two D.O.s within this category: Rioja and Priorat. (more…)

If you are planning to come to Bilbao soon (or later) and you want to experience some great wine and food typical of this area and also want a chic and cool international atmosphere you MUST visit restaurante Kikare. (more…)

I must have drunk at least a hundred bottles of Spanish red wines before I tasted my first Spanish white.

Now, that sounds like I drink quite a lot but it probably took me something like 7 or 8 years from that I started drinking wine till I encountered my first glass of Spanish white. In 7-8 years you have time to drink a lot of wine, especially if you are in your late teens and early twenties and grow up in Sweden. Back then my perception of white wine was a bottle of overwhelmingly sweet Liebfraumilch or oxidized goat pee (at least that’s what it tasted like) from Cyprus. So I tended to stay away from the white stuff. (more…)

Another working week is almost over and my advice is to indulge your selves over the weekend! To help you in the right direction I am now going to give away one of my big secrets – My favourite chocolate cake recipe. Anyone can do it; it’s a quick and easy to make cake with soft and nice chocolate taste. (more…)

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It’s surprising just how many expats there are living in and around Bilbao. When you first arrive here you get the feeling that there are no other foreigners around. After all, this isn’t London or Hong Kong. But slowly you begin to hear about an Italian family living up the road, an American married to a local a few blocks away, your child’s classmate has an English father, and on it goes until you build up a large number of foreign friends.

Sandy, Anna and I all met through a group of mothers with young children who meet up for coffee on Wednesday mornings. Obviously, now that the three of us are at Excel Wines, we don’t go to the coffee mornings but we try to make it to the monthly dinners and we often meet up at the weekends to go out to eat, to the beach or other activities with our families. (more…)

From now on bottles of wine from La Rioja Denominación de Origen Clasificada will no longer bear the familiar logo. In an attempt to appeal to younger wine-lovers, the long-standing logo will now be replaced with a brighter, more modern logo with cleaner lines. The aim is to reflect the new, modern aspects of wine-growing in La Rioja without detracting from the traditional wines. (more…)