Wine Blog Awards and Slow updates

If you are a regular reader of Tinto y Blanco, you will notice that it’s a bit quiet around here. Full time work, part time Masters level study, life and ,well lets face it, Sundy morning hangovers, have gotten the better of me over the past little while. I have been tasting quite a lot of late, just haven’t had the time to write things up and do the photos etc. End of semester is at the end of June, so I’ll try to get some of the tasting up as bulk notes with odd photo. Full service will return later in the year with a bit of a revamp of the site too.

In other news, I’ve been nominated (or the site really) in the Best Single Subject category in the Wine Blog Awards…if you’re inclined to vote you can do so here: http://bit.ly/aVCpdd or just click on the icon

Flor de Pingus 2007

I’m in a real Ribera del Duero kind of mood of late, maybe to balance out the 05 Rioja I’ve been hoarding, whatever the reason Ribera and Italians have been getting high rotation on the tasting bench. I’ve had a look at this wine a couple of times now, and to be honest it was underwhelming on first taste, tasting a bit like Bordeaux from a cold, wet vintage (i.e. dilute and green with chunky tannins). Oh dear not good. Right time for a another bottle at home with some ribeye…

Bodegas Félix Callejo Cuatro Meses en Barrica 2006

When I first started buying Spanish wine it was very much like having some kind of collector’s fetish. Hunt around for the wines, hear something about a new import and spend weeks trying to find out where to get it Word of mouth was king. These day’s I’m almost falling over Spanish wines in booze shops, bars and restaurants, you can read about them in local papers and plenty of blogs and I have even heard people talking about Rioja on the train once. Things have definitely moved on. One big change has been in the supermarket chains. You can now find a decent range of wines from all over Spain (and Portugal too) in both Vintage Cellars and Dan Murhpy’s stores. The old token range of big house swill is mostly gone and you can find some quality wines at reasonable prices. And they have gone to some length to get it right: they’ve hired some very smart and experienced chaps to find the wines, either through established importers (as this wine is) or importing them direct. Of course, the supermarkets haven’t been the kindest to many wine brands over the years and there is still a big gap between the good independant retailers and the chain stores in terms of service and range (and price in many cases), but that’s not the point. The point is this: most Spanish and Portuguese wine is sold in restaurants and bars in Australia. What this does do is to bring these wines out of the wine geek’s realm and more into the mainstream wine drinker’s. This can only be a good thing.

Travel tip sheet for Bierzo

Thinking of travelling to Bierzo? Get answers to questions like: Where is it? Where to Stay? What and where to eat?

Bierzo in a nutshell…(part 2)

So, I’ve finished traveling all around the place (I hope) and back into writing up my last trip to Spain….

Lunch at Meson Chuchi

It is still the depths of winter in La Rioja, we got about 30 to 40 cms of snow today, we are snowed and not going anywhere for at least a day. A good time to catch up on posting and drinking some nice Riojas. It has been cold all week, so a big hearty meal for lunch has been the order of the day. In this part of Spain that usually means a trip to an Asador, or as I discovered yesterday, parrilla full of chuletas (lamb chops) at home, but more on this later. If you’ve ever been to north west Spain you will have seen Asador restaurants all over the place, truck stops, small villages, big towns, everywhere. The basic premise of the Asador is a woodfired oven that is used to cook just about everything in the place.

Lunch at Amelibia

Amelibia is my favourite place to eat in the old walled town of Laguardia. We ate here a couple of times on our last trip and were very keen to get back and see what’s new. It’s a small restaurant (just 12 tables) that overlooks the vineyards and across to the Cantabrian mountain range. Laguardia is just about the last outpost of Euskadi, or Basque country, and as such the food here is a good mix of Basque food and traditional Riojan food. So you will have a menu that has things like kokotxas pil pil (throat of hake in an olive oil and garlic emulsion, a very Basque dish) and rabo de vaca al tinto vino (oxail in red wine, a typically Riojan dish).

Bierzo in a nutshell…(part 1)

It’s impossible to define a whole region after visiting for a couple of days and talking to a handful of winemakers, but here is a quick overview of what makes this a special place to make wine.

3 Days in Bierzo

I’ve been off-line for the past couple of days, which has been kinda nice. There has been plenty to write about and take photos of tho. When I was planning this trip, I was having a chat to Dougie from The Spanish Acquisition about his last trip to Spain, his highlight was a day or so in Bierzo. I had planned to go to Rueda and Toro on the way to Ribera del Duero, but Dougie was raving about this little town called Villafranca del Bierzo, ‘It’s a must do’ he said. Sign me up, I thought. And he was right, it is now another in the long list of my favourite places in Spain.

2 days in Paris

I think this post is more of an excuse to put this photo of the dawn in Paris than anything else…Just a quick stop in Paris on our way to Spain. A couple of days of eating and drinking, endless walking and a wee bit of shopping. The important part is the eating and drinking, of course. Not much in the way of Spanish wine around, but that’s not what you come to Paris for! There is a fair bit of Port available here, I’m told France is one of the bigger markets for Port. Anyway, a bit of Bordeaux and Burgundy never go astray.