The original intention I had when Ryan left for the States a few weeks ago was relatively simple. Once my cast was removed from my hand two days after his plane took off, I would run out to our local sport shop and purchase a funky bike. It wouldn’t be anything fancy mind you, just something durable enough to allow me to zoom across the beautiful sandy beaches with my little front basket filled with a bottle of Mestres Cava and a freshly baked baguette with a block of sheeps cheese from Navarra. When I found the perfect spot where I could lay my checkered green blanket down on the silky sand, I would jump off my bike, prepare my lunch and enjoy a refreshing swim in Mediterranean followed by a siesta. Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? However, life got the best of me and the “fantastic” Spanish medical system gave me an additional five more weeks in a cast, making it a total of seven weeks, with no guarantee that I would be able to see a doctor before the next millennium.

Was I a bit depressed? You bet I was! I stormed home, sat at my computer with the intention of pouring my pathetic woes out to Ryan by email when the phone rang from a Portuguese winery interested in knowing more about the European Wine Blogger Conference. Then another phone call, followed by email after email after phone call, all related to the event. Let’s not forget the ongoing requests from our clients, the creation of a  wine blog writing workshop on the OWC, or the maintenance of Catavino, which conveniently crashed during my watch. Suddenly, I was an airtraffic controller, and my plans …

It’s been a busy the past few months, because Spain is finally waking up to blogging; and we’re excited to be a small part of it. I’ve been buried in two new websites, while trying to maintain a few others. All good news for our small growing enterprise. Today, we head off to Oporto, to consult with a small port house on launching the first ever, blog about port wine. To be honest, we’re really excited about this, and we’re hoping this might lead to some purple feet if we need to visit in the near future.

But for now I want to fill you in on a few experiences I’ve had over the past week. First up, Cork!

Catalan Cork Institute

Just a quick note about my visit to Catalan Cork country, and  promise more with pictures when I have more time. I do want to say thank you to the Catalan Cork Institute, and Juan Botey Serra whose 300yr old property I fell in love with. (lot’s more pictures to put up on flickr too)

Some of you might remember our experience visiting the largest cork producer in the world last year called, Amorim. The experience, to our great surprise, was an eye opener for this cork doubter, and so I couldn’t pass up a chance to see a smaller version right here in our backyard. The Catalan Cork Institute invited Catavino to see their operations north of Barcelona in Costa Brava to explain the differences between the big guy and the small proud guy. Sadly Gabriella was getting her wrist wrapped in Gesso and was unable to join my friend Richard and I, as we traipsed through the thickets of Catalan cork country.

So, what surprised me? While cork is still produced in …

In Al Gore’s speech to us in the final hour of the II International Conference on Climate and Wine, he was asked by an attendee of the conference if children were being adequately educated on the topic of climate change. His response was simply that no, they weren’t, but that we needed to take great caution when we do choose to educate them on the inevitable, considering that it is they who will see the most dire consequences of this phenomenon. And if, and when, we do decide to step up to the plate and present them with the facts of figures of tomorrow’s changing world, we must do so with great caution so that they may not look upon the future with fear and hesitation, but rather hope. And when they look back to the past at their parent’s efforts during a time of change and instability, they will do so with pride that their ancestors stood up against great odds to make the hard choices necessary to permit change towards a greener, healthier, more balanced, existence: an existence that changed its focus from consumption to preservation, from greed to sharing and from fear to openness.

As an educator, I took these ideas to heart, because I still feel that the majority of people look at this issue as if it is too big, too large and too ominous to tackle. And because CO2 is odorless and invisible, we can’t quantifiably measure our contribution against it. If we had a little dial mounted in our kitchen tracking each time we chose not to use our car, chose energy efficient appliances or recycled our waste, maybe this would make a difference, but for now, many feel as if they cannot do anything to significantly change …

Not a week ago, I was seriously considering prostituting my wines to get entry into the II International Conference on Climate Change and Wine hosted in Barcelona. For years, Al Gore (the keynote speaker for the event) has been one of my role models, a man willing to stand up for truth, acceptance and change on both the micro and macro level. His film, An Inconvenient Truth, shocked and frightened me into seeing how dramatically the world is changing, yet comforting me to know that change is possible if we’re willing to see the reality for what it is. Clearly, with a conference boasting of an impressive list of speakers fighting for conservation in winemaking including, Pancho Campo (a pioneer in conservation and winemaking, as well as the host) and Dr. David Smart (renowned scientist at UC Davis), just to name a few, I was eager to attend.

Years ago, a close friend of mine shared a personal mantra of his that reminded me of Al Gore’s message: we are all comfortable being uncomfortable. I love this expression because it sums up exactly what humans tend to do when life gets rocky; they fall into complacence. Rather than ripping away the blinders and accepting that we are all responsible for this planet, many choose to keep them on, blaming and giving excuses for why temperatures are rising, glaciers are melting and storms are increasing in intensity. Coincidence? I think not!

Climate Change in Spain

A few years back, Decanter wrote an interesting article on the consequences of climate change on Spanish vintners like Bodegas Torres, reporting that:

Increasingly hostile conditions associated with climate change are forcing vintners to head north.

The most dire predictions call for up to half …

Last year, we chatted about the idea of having a wine blogger conference in the Wine Blogger Facebook group. Ideas we’re thrown about and plans tentatively put into place. The consensus at the time, as far as I could tell, is that we need to have a conference, and that we can’t wait to participate. But from the looks of it, not much else was decided.

Fast forward to today. Robert McIntosh of the blog The Wine Conversation who also works to promote Rioja wines in the UK, and I have talked on and off for a few months trying to figure out how we can arrange to meet up. Due to the holidays, and many other inconveniences, we haven’t yet shaken hands, but we have brainstormed and come to the conclusion that we should try to put together the first European wine blogger conference here in Spain. We figure that this will not be the first, nor the last, nor will it be the slickest, shiniest one, but it will be a start and a place to begin the conversation among, in this case, European based wine bloggers. I do hope that at least one or two non-European bloggers might be able to join us as well. So without saying too much, we’d like to open the doors to suggestions and ideas. So far, here is a run down of what we hope to do, and what we have to work with:

Dates: Last weekend of August 29-31st - Thoughts are that the vineyards will be beautiful, and most Europeans will still have some holiday left. We think 3 days would be enough and not cause to much of a burden on the pocket books of wine bloggers! I promise that if anyone …