DISQUS

Keep up the travels and the good work Opai!! I think my favorite trip of 2008 would have to be my month long journey in Spain starting in Barcelona and getting to know you both! I had an mazing time exploring the streets of Barcelona and Terrassa with you, as well as the train ride down to Valencia and the wonderful dinner we shared together with other wine bloggers. From there I was fortunate enough to enjoy the sun and surf down near Alicante (Benissa to be exact) with some fellow wine importers based in Poland who have since become great friends. One thing that I can say for certain is that Spain has a curious way of making you smile and make friends at every turn!! Meeting back up with Ryan in Rioja was fantastic, as we had the opportunity to mix a little business with some great pintxos and wine, and then I was off to see the harvest in Bordeaux, and then more driving as I headed over to Galicia for an amazing few days filled with new wines, food and more friends. Finishing my trip in Madrid enjoying the beautiful fall weather sipping on sherry couldn't have been a better end! I hope 2009 has some more fascinating wines and people in store for me, and more importantly, everyone else!

I was waiting for some news from Spain about all this as I just read their unemployment rate is the highest it has been in years. As a US based importer of mainly Spanish wine, I am curious and even more nervous about how this is going to effect Spanish wine producers, and in turn, business here in US. My main concern with Spain is one that isn't anything new, but something I feel needs to change. It is the concept of "regional" marketing. It seems to me that there aren't any "SPAIN" marketing campaigns (well, effective ones anyway!) and I think this is unfortunate. Regions such as Rioja, Priorato, Ribera del Duero and Rias Baixas have fantastic regional ad campaigns and marketing in the US, but I think for Spain to "weather the economic crisis" as you say, this could be another easy, relatively inexpensive way to help promote "SPAIN," not just individual regions. These places are already paying top dollar to promote their regions, why not join forces, cut costs, and promote Spain as a whole? That being said, in my mind, this could be done VERY easily and INEXPENSIVELY through the internet as you mention. Anyway you look at it, I think that Spain and Portugal, hell, for that matter, every wine producing country needs to have a bigger presence in the online world. Especially with the problems that France is having with their advertising woes, now is the time to for Spain and Portugal to jump at the opportunity to promote their wines any way possible, but especially more through the internet.

Happy Birthday Gab!!!! PLease, please, please have the Coto de Gomariz Colleita Seleccionada with your Thai Food, it will be perfect!!!! Wish I was there for the festivities, but I have to vote today for your birthday present!

Can't wait for this post Ryan!!! I'm excited to see what you have hidden here.......................

Funny, Gary V dedicated his show to a certain type of closure yesterday. Check it out!

http://tv.winelibrary.com/2008/09/22/put-a-zork...

I'm sooooooo hungry now. Your "acting" wasn't bad at all either, bravo!

Justin,
Thanks for all the information from Vinoble, I was supposed to attend this year but unfortunately couldn't make it. After hearing your description of the setting of the event in your previous blog and the interesting finds from this one, I will be sure to attend next year. Salud!

I love boquerones!! One of my favorite tapas is a Gilda- a flavor packed bite all on the same toothpick consisting of an olive, an anchovy, and a guindilla, those delicious little Basque peppers. While visiting some friends in Vitoria, they told me they are called Gilda's in reference to the character from Casablanca: she was salty and spicey!

I had a dream that happened to me once......................By the way, where is the picture of your roof top ganja farm?

He is definitely someone to look to in the wine world who is already implementing ideas and techniques that everyone will eventually need to use. I think we need more rolemodels such as him to help promote sustainability within bodegas the world over. Bravo Sr. Torres!

Felicitaciones Gabriella!!

What, no love for the almighty Spanish "beer" Cruzcampo?? The best warm/flat/old tasting beer in all of Spain, I wouldn't have made it through all those festivals if it weren't for that red canned beauty! While I have become more of an enophile in recent years, I still consider myself a beer man. I'm not sure where I get it from, maybe my Irish heritage, growing up Catholic in Mormon Utah, or probably more surprising for people not familiar with the Beehive State, the amazing small breweries we have here! Yes it's true, we have breweries here (with real beer!) and most are top notch, one of my local faves, Redrock Brewing, won "Large Brewpub of the Year" at the 2007 Great American Brew Festival, and most recently picked up a silver medal at the 2008 World Beer Cup for their nut brown ale. While wine has quickly won over my heart, there really isn't anything better that a good beer after a long day mountain biking the Wasatch Mountains. Bottoms Up!!

Well Ryan, my answer to your question is obviously complicated and has many different answers, but I think you touch on one of the main points that leads in that direction. You have already made the case several times, both in your main article and your post above, the critics need to start blogs!!! We 've already seen a huge jump in people takin charge and educating themselves about wine, which I think needs to progress even more, but I believe that is a step in the right direction in itself. I think readers need to trust their own palates more and not rely on the tastes and let's be real here, the opinions, of some of the wine critics. However, I think we do need to recognize the fact that these critics do know wine at a extremely professional level, so I don't think getting rid of the point system and the big name critics all together is possible, or even a positive thing. I guess in a long round-about way to answer your question, I think people need to educate themselves more, read the critics reviews with a grain of salt, and try as many different wines out there as possible to discover their own palate. Just because Jay Miller will score a big extracted Rioja a 96 (what does the plus mean really anyway?) doesn't mean that everyone will like it. Wilf mentioned above "Wine is about friends, family, food, friendship, frivolty and...." Isn't this really why we drink wine?

Great post Ryan! Although I have to admit, I am kind of torn up inside because I both agree and disagree with you. As an importer in the U.S., we are basically at the mercy of all the different wine mags, especially Tanzer and your personal favorite, Parker. I say this because unfortunately, 99% of all stores almost require you to have shelf talkers for your wine if you want your product to sell. Yes, I admit, I am one of those people that puts scores right in your face, but my livelyhood literally depends on it. I wish this wasn't the case, but you know as well as I do that some people follow these magazines like a cult and won't buy a wine or go out of their comfort zone if it doesn't have a stamp of approval and a high rating from these mags. While some of the magazines will occasionally have an interesting or informative article, this is where I applaud Catavino and other blogs for focusing their writing and attention about WINE not about SCORES. Take your recent Rioja project for example, I haven't read a magazine article that in depth, that focused, but most important, that personal about Rioja in any of them, and they have the money to do a project like that!! This is what I think the big magazines need, a little personality. There is so much happening in the wine world today that I feel we need several different outlets for all this information, including the Parkers and Tanzers, but let's just hope they can open their eyes to new and different types of wine drinkers.

Living in the U.S, I have noticed in both the west and east coast liquor stores (control states to be specific) a HUGE jump in Spanish wines, especially in the past year. I agree with Richarda that there has been a large surge in Jumilla, but I have noticed more of a jump in Toro and Monsant DO's in the control states. I have also seen a massive influx of Albarino, it seemed almost in a two week span that there were 8 new Albarinos in my local liquor store. I have noticed a lot more wines out of Galicia, especially from Rias Baixas and Ribeiro. While I love to see more and more Spanish wines available, I have noticed the "Aussie Effect" happening at the stores and people are being bombarded with too many sub-par wines and getting overwhelmed and end up heading to a different section. However, on the positive side of things, I think people are so much more knowledgable about what they are buying that most often than not people will know how to weed out the average bottle of wine for that fantastic one, which you can still find for under $15 in the Spanish section. I would like to see more exotic or relatively undiscovered varieties and wines enter the market. I think items like Txakoli and some of the native Galician grapes Godello, Loureira and Treixadura would open up a whole new world of what Spain has to offer.

Thanks so much for this article!!! I have been addicited to patxaran ever since I was fortunate to visit San Sebastian for the first time in the winter of '98. I believe it was the brand "La Navarra" and our Basque friend ordered it without asking if we had tried it before or even liked it. Needless to say, after a night of walking around the old town eating pinxtos all night, it was the perfect digestif after a hard days work of eating! The best patxaran I have found is at the Hotel Villa Laguardia, just down the hill from the walled city of Laguardia. It is there house patxaran, but I never did find out the brand or who was making it for them. If anyone has info on this I would greatly appreciate it. Salud!

I am going to be dreaming in technicolor tonight about morcilla, chulatillas, revueltos con setas, and of course a fine Rioja wine. Thanks for sparking my fondest memories of Rioja because they always include eating!

Congrats on all of your progress and here is to your continued success!! Salud!

My favorite wines out of Rioja have quickly become the "High Expression" wines, or "Alta Expresion." While these do not have their own individual label as explained above (crianza, reserva, etc.) they will fall into one of these categories, generally the "Guarantee of Origin" classification. These Alta Expresion's are, for me, the most interesting wines coming out of Rioja today. They allow the bodegas to experiment with different blends and are an amazing example of what can be produced by fusing traditional Rioja methods with today's cutting edge technology used in many of the bodegas in Rioja. I believe that more and more these are the wines that we will be hearing about in the future when Rioja is mentioned.

Another popular myth, at least in Rioja Alavesa, is that the name could have derived from the early wine producers noticing all the leaves (hojas) after the harvest filling the rivers and streams. I enjoy this theory, especially after fly fishing many of these "RIOS" after the harvest and literally not being able to see the water underneath all the "HOJAS." Although, I am quite partial to the Santiago Ijalba Theory....Delicious Wines! (Although the link above is wrong, it is www.santiagoijalba.com)