I love to read. I say this as someone who has read very little lately. Sometimes the world of blogging, and my Google Reader, seem to devour what time I have each day to dedicate myself to the written word. I find that I turn more often to a book on tape or a podcast about the latest world events, rather than reach for a physical tome. Both enjoyable and fine alternatives to holding pages in my hand, but I do miss reading books. Fortunately, I find that my reading comes in spurts where I’ll consume 3-5 books in one month and then take some time off from it. Right now, I feel like I’m heading into one of my reading phases, and just in time as the rooftop slowly warms. With Spring soon to come, I assume that I’ll find myself more often with a glass of wine in one hand and a new volume in the other, lounging happily on our terrace.

I say all this because I just received a new book to read/review and it appears to be the perfect motivation to reinvigorate my desire to read. Valencia Land of Wine is a book that came to me by way of a friend in Valencia. John Maher is someone I met about 12 months ago when attending the Vino Elite wine show. We connected through his site Wines of Valencia and later attended a fun tasting together put on by the folks at Verema.com.

John is the editor and translator of this book. Having moved here in 2006, he found that he had a similar problem to me when …

Today, I write to you from a position of a person with a head cold and a pile of port wine in front of me. Currently, we’re working to put together a large tasting of 2005 ports and assorted odds and ends. Our objective is to release a PDF at the end of the month for you all to peruse and explore at your leisure. This will hopefully become a new feature here at Catavino as we devote each month to a theme and summerizing it with a “buying guide” based on our recommendations. So today, we want to offer you a few tidbits of information, a new feature, and a question.

First, a new feature!
Catavino has a newsletter! If you look in the second column on the home page you’ll see a sign-up form for our newsletter. This is a new feature and will be different from the RSS feed that some of you subscribe to by email. While the RSS emails are just emails with our latest posts, the newsletter will include things that never make it onto the main site. Each month, we’re aiming to send out one newsletter covering some of our most popular articles, current unpublished happenings in Iberia, interesting events you may want to attend, and few odds and ends that may tickle your fancy. Please sign up, tell a friend, and pass it on. The first newsletter will most likely come out around the holidays.

Special Offer for Catavino Readers Only

When we were in Jerez to get our certification, we were given a book by the Consejo titled “The Big Book of Sherry Wines”. This book alone made the entire trip worth our time, not to mention all the fabulous sherries we tasted! It was …

Early this year, while teaching children full time, I made a brazen attempt at committing to reading a half-dozen Iberian wine books by the end of the summer. And as much as my heart was in the right place, I was hardly successful. In hind site, our recent Sherry adventure taught me an invaluable lesson: I am a hand’s on girl. When we went to Jerez, I had the rare opportunity to combine theory with practice. For me, when learning about a new subject, I want to touch it, breathe it and taste it. To merely read a book without having the physical connection, quite frankly, bores me. I can’t connect. In Jerez, however, I dove into Sherry wine for five days feverishly learning about the Solera system and coming out of the seminar more interested in the topic than when I first walked in the door. I even went so far as to carry the stupidly heavy hardcover book provided by the DO in my carry-on bag just so I could review the information on our way back to Barcelona. That’s passion!

Now, dedicating November to Port, I have decided to, once again, merge theory with practice by reading Richard Mayson’s book, “Port and the Douro”. Mayson retells the story of Port over the centuries, poetically intertwining his personal experience of interacting with the region and the people to the vines themselves.

“It is easy to be possessive about the Douro. Deep valleys, tiny villages and remote quintas engender a strong sense of place among those who live and work there. Ask someone where they come from and they will tell you, with great pride, the …