Live life with fine Spanish wines

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…)

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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…)

This is a new and slightly scary venture for us as we are not seasoned bloggers. But we are beginning to understand what a useful tool a blog can be. Our principal reason for setting one up is that we realize that many of our customers are often looking for ideas for which wines to buy and, although we do provide a certain amount of information on the Excel Wines website, this is sometimes not enough.

According to recent research done by a company called Wine Opinions, people who buy wine on-line choose their wine after consulting a “Wine-knowledgeable friend”. They asked people for 2 answers to the question: What most influences your wine purchase decisions?

“Wine-knowledgeable friends” was the most frequently-given response, with 72% of participants suggesting they’d consult a wine enthusiast they know. After that, retail staff was most important with 61%, then the various wine publications. Having read this we thought we could use this blog for our readers and us to become more interactive and with the social networking that comes with a blog get more “wine-knowledgeable friends” and also to make it easier for our customers to talk to us when choosing a wine! We also intend to use this blog to give a little more background about particular wines wineries, wine regions and other wine related topics in the hope that we can transmit some of the enthusiasm we feel for the wines we sell. Over the coming weeks and months, we shall talk about wines that are old favorites, wines that are more recent discoveries, wines that we like a little more because of the people behind them, wineries that we’ve enjoyed visiting, etc, etc. We want to share all this with customers (and customers-to-be) to help make the whole experience of ordering from us easier and more enjoyable.

We hope that by putting up a topic we can encourage reactions to the comments we make and get on the wines we offer and also on our services. We want this blog to be the beginning of a dialog between you and us. If you have any ideas about what you would like us to write about, don’t be shy! Let us know and we will do our best to fulfill your wish. Also we would like to thank Catavino for all their support, tips and hints in the process of setting up this blog.

Thanks again and let us know what you think.

Ane Miren, Anna and Sandy