On Tuesday, the 11th of March, there is a blogger dinner scheduled in downtown Barcelona. Bodegas Tintoralba, a large cooperative located in Almansa Spain, is sponsoring a dinner for bloggers of any make and model. Regardless if your passion is food, wine or travel, you are more than welcome to RSVP either here or here to inform us if you’ll be around. For those of you not familiar with the tasting schedule in Spain, the blogger dinner will be on the same week as the gigantic wine and food fair: Alimentaria. If you’re a blogger, we encourage you to sign up as press and attend, even if it’s only for one day. It’s a great opportunity to taste and explore wines from all over Spain, while making connections with other bloggers! For more information, check out Tintoralba’s website and Catavino.es.

In other news, the 2008 European Wine Blogger Conference has a home: www.ewbc2008.wineblogger.info, complete with a forum and contact page! Although the page is rather desolate still, we’re slowly adding to it as we go. Also, this past week at FITUR, I met with some people who are interested in helping us out, and possibly, sponsoring part of it. If you want to lend a hand, or hope to attend, please join us in the forum and share your ideas.

If you know someone who would like to help sponsor the event, or contribute in some other way, I’m all ears. Leave a message here, or over on the new site. So far, I think we have a great turn out shaping up. I do still hope and pray that we can attract some Americans on this side of the pond. What’s it going to take guys? How …

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 …

Here’s the latest incarnation of the Wineblogger.info list of blogs. So far, we’re over 100 strong and growing, even though I know there are several sites not listed on here. If you are one of the sites listed and notice one that we’ve missed, please let us know asap, and we’ll get it up there as fast as we can. So skim the list and then I have a few comments and questions for all of you.

Catavino · Winecast · LENNDEVOURS · Vinography · DrVino · The Cork Board · Grape Thinking · Wannabe Wino · The Calwineries Blog · Wilf’s Wine Press · Good Wine Under $20 · Tinto y Blanco · Grape Juice · Gollywinedrops · Jamie Goode’s Wine Blog · The Cork Dork · De Long Wine Moment · Fermentation · Professor Bainbridge On Wine · Passionate Foodie · Sokol Blosser · Pinotblogger · Spitton · Twisted Oak Winery · Vivi’s Wine Journal · AlaWine.com · Domaine 547 · The Cru SA · The Wine Collecter · Gare aux Goûts · Wine Culture · Tales of a Sommelier · West Hills Wine Blog · REthink Wine Blog · Basic Juice · Bubble Brothers · Domaine de la Gramiere Blog · Wine Blog Atlas · Wine Enthusiast’s Unreserved · Wine-Girl · Tinto Records · Steep Creek · Drucket · Celebrate Wine · One Wine Per Week · Israeli Wine Direct · …