Editor’s Note: If you remember, a little while back, Ryan reviewed the book “Valencia, Land of Wine“, written by Joan C. Martin and translated and edited by John Maher. While, in Valencia, we asked John how he felt about writing the occasional piece for us on Valancian wine, being our resident expert and all. And to our great surprise, he agreed. You’ll see from his elegant prose and witty humor that our choice was a good one! We are very happy to have him join us and suggest you check out his profile on our “About” page for more information.

That said, his piece today is a request on my part to have him share his knowledge on the native Valencian grape, Vernil, as a reaction to a rather blah experience we had while in Valencia. Although Vernil had a nice aromatic nose, we found the palate to be a touch empty, lacking in both body and acidity. So I tried to do a little research on the grape to see if others were having the same experience, when I came across John’s description of Verdil on his website, Wines of Valencia. The proverbial light bulb went off, and it suddenly occurred to me that there would be no better person to tackle this subject than John.

John, thanks and welcome aboard!

The wine reference books I have to hand don’t have much to say about the Verdil grape. The “Oxford Companion to Wine” says it makes “rather neutral wine” in Yecla and the southernmost part of Valencia, while my much-thumbed “Dictionary of Drink” says incorrectly that it is grown in the Alicante region. …

You can’t do it all at once. Life is a series of small steps. And if you believe that any project that kicks off today will have success tomorrow, well, be prepared for disappointment. This is my mantra to every client we take on, “Start your blog today, work on it, and eventually, if you invest enough of yourself, people will reward you by paying attention.” Clearly, our friends at Adegga, a Portuguese startup, are firm believers in this philosophy.

Bootstrapping is when you start a business without venture capital, or a heavy investment, building instead, from good old elbow grease and a bit of self sacrifice. You look for help where you can find it, and you trade services with others who are in a similar position. Catavino is an exercise in bootstrapping, and we are proud to call ourselves friends with the Adegga team - united disciples of this philosophy. Over the past few months, Andre Ribeirinho, Andre Cid and Emídio Santos, have paved the way in exemplifying how a little vision and lot of persistence can eventually lead to success.

So what is Adegga? Well at its core, its a social tasting note site. In Adegga, you can leave notes on wines, manage your personal wine cellar, and participate in a community that is growing daily. Granted, we know there are plenty of social tasting note sites out there, and trying to keep track of them all is an exercise in futility. That said, this post will not attempt to answer the question on which one is best, but rather why Adegga is useful.

In truth, we at Catavino use three different tasting note sites for 3 separate reasons: Cellartracker, …

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 …

In January, for those of you who weren’t following our play by play of the II International Conference on Climate and Wine, Catavino spent three days cornering wine celebrities, in order to get a better sense as to how wine is being affected both now and in the future by the fluctuating climate conditions. Stubborn and wonderfully determined people such as Richard Smart, Bruno Prats, Miguel Torres, Pancho Campo, Carlos de Jesus of Amorim, Dr. Gregory Jones, and of course, Al Gore, all vented their fears and frustrations with the current lackadaisical attitude held throughout the wine world regarding the impact of climate on wine. Each passionate in their own right, but there was one in particular that I had been pining to interview for months.

Having been previously introduced to Oz Clarke through his books and articles, it wasn’t until I saw his charismatic nature in Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure that I was hooked. This BBC television program, first aired in 2006, and was undoubtedly one of my favorite wine programs, if only to see Oz flirt with yet another woman. His coy and passionate nature was fun and made learning about Bordeaux and Languedoc-Roussillon entertaining, rather than intimidating. Therefore, to have the opportunity to not only see him in person, but to interview him, albeit a little daunting, was great fun. Add a camera and question that impassions him, and Oz will keep going for hours, interweaving personal stories and jokes with highly specific wine facts that will eventually leave your head spinning.

That said, we would like to thank Richard Gillespie for filming and producing our …