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 …

It’s probably no surprise for many of you to learn  that I love shooting photos. From time to time Catavino has shown pictures I have shot, and ever since Gabriella came to work full time for Catavino, we have a protocol when visiting vineyards that leads to many more exposures than before. Gabriella is a great writer and listener, and with her big blue eyes, her job is to charm the wine maker and get the story, as I wander about shooting pics and snagging shots of this and that. It works well and I love doing it.

I suppose I had no choice but to like photography. As a child, my dad probably looked more like a lens to me than a face, as he was constantly taking shots. I would follow him around with a block of wood shaped like a camera that my Grandpa made me, shooting at everything and anything my dad took a picture of. My other Grandpa, and all my uncles, are still perpetual photo bugs. One of my uncles is even a professional photographer in Belize!

So while I still have a lot to learn, and a long ways to go, I love doing it, and I love the ability to use tools like Flickr to share my photos and Lightroom to develop my RAW photos. And for all you bloggers out there, I believe in the Internets; therefore, all of my pictures on Flickr are licensed with a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license. What does that mean for you? It means I encourage you to use my photos on your blog, …

A bit of self promotion coming up. Ryan here, and come the last week in January, I will have the pleasure of speaking to a crowd of wine industry professionals about the Internets and wine, and more specifically, how to use the Interwebs to promote oneself to drum up some business. From the Wine Pleasures website:
1ST INTERNATIONAL WINE TOURISM CONFERENCE & WORKSHOP

Port Resort Sitges 24th - 27th January 2009

The first Wine Pleasures International Wine Tourism Conference & Workshop in Sitges next year promises to be very exciting. We plan to provide you with a Catalan flavour and a very memorable experience.
I’ll be focusing on some of the ABC’s of wine and technology. Here in Spain, we have Webblogs SL and a vibrant Beer and Blogs culture, but our wineries are woefully behind the times when it comes to harnessing the power of the Internet. Well, maybe not “behind the times”, so much as “before the times”. For most Spanish wineries, “web”sites are those annoying white lacy things found in your barrel room that either need to be removed, or in the case of Lopez de Heredia, support elements for the architecture. As my US “geek” readers will note, California wineries are waking up fast, and as witnessed by this last weekend’s Wine Blogger Conference, the industry knows they need wine bloggers to pay attention and I have seen a move to websites that function, rather than just flash.

Is there hope for Spain? I think so, but first let me rant a little bit more.

The other point I want to make is a bit more controversial. The best way for a Spanish winery to do something innovative and effective when it comes to optimizing their online presence …

Where do I begin this rambling and nonsensical post, filled with random bits of information that don’t really deserve a full post onto themselves, but that still need to be said? Well, where else than our “Iberian Links Around the Web”! Similar to your kitchen junk drawer, this post is filled with interesting bits of information that you may not ever need, but may come in use when you least expect it.

The Sixth….Taste

Granted, although we don’t have Haley Joel Osment scaring us with his momentary episodes of seeing dead people, we can be equally freaked out the next time your buddy turns to you after drinking a glass of wine and says, “I’m not really getting a bitter flavor here, but maybe more of a calcium-y taste”. According to Science Daily, beyond sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (similar to savory), humans also have a sixth taste receptor for foods that taste, well, like calcium - a flavor bordering between sour and bitter. It explains why foods that are generally high in calcium such as bok choy, kale and collards, generally come off as bitter if not cooked in a few sticks of butter so that the calcium can bind to the fat cells; whereby, preventing you from tasting it. In relation to wine, it just may explain why some wines are described as more minerally/calcium-y, and can therefore, be monitored in order to obtain a better taste profile. Can you pick out the sixth calcium-y taste in a wine?

Hey, That’s What We Needed! Another Roadblock to Enjoying Sherry!

Chef Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck Restaurant in London, and scientist Professor Don Mottram of Reading …

Ok, jetlag is done, culture shock is mitigated, and my life is starting to get back to its crazy usual self. I’ve inoculated my system with some fresh Iberian wines and assorted tapas. So what happened in Minnesota you may ask? Well a lot. One wedding, one 60th birthday party and at least 4 wine filled dinners. So rather than give you a play by play, I’ll bullet point some of the highlights and ask you a few questions, or rather, state some observations from the visit.

Jason Kallsen, the man behind the World Class Wines Blog, invited me to talk about blogging and Iberian wine on the second night I was in town! Thankfully, it was a great success. Held at the cafe across the street (space purposes) from SoloVino in St.Paul, we talked about wine, blogging and the intersection of the two. Take away thoughts? Well, I was shocked by how few of the “wine geeks” in attendance actually read blogs. While about half had read a blog, very few actually frequented them. If anyone who attended has anything to say about this, please chime in!

I tasted wines twice with old buddies/wine geeks. First night, I tried two Pinot Noirs, one of which was a Bergstrom 2002 PN that was beautiful, seductive, and well worth it. The other, as a result of my desire to carry over wines that were unique and different, was a Kosta Brown RRV 2005 that was undrinkable, or at the least, not a wine that I would ever purposefully go out and buy. Hot, thick, clunky, this was a wine that was better distilled than consumed. Oh, and at 14.7% alcohol?! Give …