The seasons are changing and so are many peoples wine choices. What do you notice you switch too as the temperature lowers, and the dinners become more robust? For many, sadly white wine gets sidelined due to the temperature, preferring to save those crisp whites for warm summer picnics.

About a month ago, we received three bottles of Ribeiro wines, all of which seemed very intriguing. Sadly cold weather, lots of work, and a killer sore throat pushed off our tasting. But last night, with our trip to India approaching in a few day’s time, we took the plunge and decided that in light of a week long adventure in spicy food, we should at least pop open some bottles that should potentially go incredibly well with this type of fair. Enter 3 wines from the producer: Coto de Gomariz

Taken from the P.R. Grisley site:
Located in the Ribeiro region in Galicia, Coto de Gomariz is made up of several vineyards covering a total of about fifty acres in the districts of Gomariz, Vieite, Esposende and Beade.

In 1979 the Figueiral estate was recovered and became the first of the properties to be included in the Coto de Gomariz vineyard terrain. This marked the first step towards restoration of the native Ribeiro varieties, including Albarino, Treixadura, Loureira and Godello varieties.

Coto de Gomariz wines are the result of a unique combination of an Atlantic climate, low levels of rainfall, long hours of sunshine and sharp contrasts between daytime and nighttime temperatures, as well as an unusual granitic soil.
While all three wines stood out as …

How many articles have we written on the importance of wineries creating a strong Internet presence? Half a dozen, a dozen?

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Alimentaria, the Good and the Bad!

We have begged, pleaded, and gotten on both knees trying to convince the Iberian wine community to take notice, but it seemed as if our voices were merely bouncing off of brick walls, only reaching the chosen few who really were open to change.

So we tried another route, creating an Internet marketing company to provide wineries the support and tools they needed to launch themselves into the new Internet. It seemed to work, but our reach was rather limited. A dozen here, a hundred there, but nothing on the scale that we knew was necessary.

In turn, this led us to co-creating the annual European Wine Blogger Conference, in hopes of not only bringing together the vast array of wine bloggers around the world, but to also bridge a previously held gap between wineries and online journalists. The results were incredible, allowing all sides to find ways in which we could communicate and collaborate more effectively through the internet. (Note: more details on the 2009 conference coming very soon!)

Editors note: Starting today, we will be highlighting an Iberian wine, or winery, every Friday. It may cover a single one, a project or a winery. We’ll try, in most cases, to choose wines that are widely distributed, but this will not always be possible. Hope you enjoy.

About a year and half ago, I stumbled across a wine website that had a link to an Iberian winery blog. Clicking the link, I was taken to a page with about three posts and no comments enabled. At the time, there were approximately three other winery blogs out there, and I was excited to see another pop up. However, this “blog” didn’t allow comments. Thus, in my world, it wasn’t a blog. Long story short, earlier this month, I made contact with Andrew McCarthy through a friend, and was able to help him with a little Blogspot coding to remedy this problem. Today Castro Martin sits at the 8th place in our sidebar list of Iberian winery blogs, and I’m glad to have them there. I have loved Castro Martin’s wines for quite some time, and today, both Gabriella and I would like to recommend their great Albarino’s from the popular region of Rias Baixas.

Seriously, these are some nice wines: full of body and pure fruit, they are both complex and easy to understand. The Castro Martin Albarino is straightforward pure flesh fruit with some zesty acidity. It is a 2006, and if you noticed, we’re almost to the end of 2008; meaning that for it to have this kind of zestiness is a credit to the winemaker or the grape. I’ve been lectured by winemakers who work with Albariño that contrary to popular …

Martín Codax 2005 - Spain, Galicia, Rías Baixas(8/2/2006) Albariño - A classic albariño, this velvety wine is almost slick on the palate, smooth and serious but with a refreshing and perfectly balanced level of acidity, and intensely aromatic – calling to mind pears, apples, and kiwis, as well as a light floral undertone.

Burgáns 2005 - Spain, Galicia, Rías Baixas (8/2/2006)Albariño - The fermentation of this wine is stopped slightly early, leaving it with around 5mg/liter of residual sugar, resulting in a sweeter, more tropical wine that abounds with notes of banana, honey and cotton candy. Smooth on the palate but with less aromatic persistence, 60% of this wine is exported.