Ever since Catavino first became a full fledged member of the wine blogging community 3 years ago, we’ve always run ads on our site. Google adsense is the most obvious, and for most bloggers, the easiest solution to “monetize” your site, and thus, has been with us since the beginning. And since our inception, Google adsense has earned us a whopping grand total of $300. We’ve also worked with a few text link ads, and have been fortunate enough to have part of our travels in Rioja sponsored. All in all, this has added up to around $500, a car rental and a hotel room. Not bad, but not really worth our time, nor worth the clutter.

So today, we are officially declaring Catavino as an ad-free website. No blinking ads. No flashing signs. No “targeted ads”. Instead, we’re doing something novel: dedicating ourselves to publishing good, comprehensive content.

That said, we are not adverse to sponsorships, and if someone wants to help us to do our job better, we are all ears. Sponsorships from people in and around the world of Iberian wine who want to reach approximately 15,000+ unique visitors each month(a number that is growing), is something we will continue to be open to. Though from here on out, we’ll do more to integrate these sponsorships into the site in a way that does not clutter up the sidebars and headers. We know that advertising on sites like this is a numbers game, and while we have loyal readers from diverse backgrounds, Google ads will never do much for us, and we rather save space …

Over the years, I’ve tried to accept that customer service is a very foreign concept here in Spain. Unless I’m shelling out hundreds, if not thousands, of Euros for a service, the likelihood of my getting someone to greet me with a smile (even if it’s hokey and completely disingenuous), listen to my concerns without being defensive, use problem solving skills, work in a quick and efficient manner, and generally place my needs as a customer before theirs as a provider, is as likely as my being able to recreate Michaelangelo in my apartment. And if you’ve seen my stick figures, you’ll know how improbable this truly is. So you’d think I’d be used to this, but unfortunately, I’m not.

Why can’t I let go? Why can’t I abide by the AA principle of learning to accept the things I cannot change? In short, because I feel like I can change the situation, even if that means a simple post on what good customer service means to me.

I bring this issue up today, because I had the unfortunate experience yesterday of talking to a representative of Castillo de Perelada, a large Cava producer in Villafranca de Penedes. While planning a visit to the area last week, not only to meet with the Denominacion de Origen, but to also visit wineries that we could potentially recommend to you, I made an effort to contact them.

So what did I do? I sent a few emails over the course of two weeks, giving them a full report as to who we are and why December is such an important month for Cava producers at Catavino. What did I receive from them…nothing! Plan 2: I jumped on their website and tried to search for a working telephone number. …