Here are some stats on the past year:

• In July last year 12,000 people (6,800 according to Google Analytics) looked at the site.  Last month, just over 28,000 dropped by. (13,000 according to Google Analytics)
• The top 3 search terms for the site are: Flor de Pingus, Pork Belly and Spanish Wine.
• The strangest link to the site this year is from Cosmopolitan magazine (good to see teenage girls are into Spanish wine).
• The number of Australian readers increased to 65%. From out side Australia, the USA is the largest with 10%, the UK is second with 9% and it seems that some of the producers are checking up me with Spain and Portugal both coming in at  6% each.
• There have been 1,281 real comments (528 last year), 29,178 spam commen ts (only 4000 last year!).

  

So all you have to do is guess the number of corks in the box, you can click on the image to get a bigger image if you think that will help. Put your guess in a comment on this post (Do not email it too me) and you’re in with a chance of winning a nice little six pack of wines. The wines are:

• • Cillar de Silos Crianza 2005 and Remuleri Reserva 2003 from The Spanish Acquisition
  • Two bottles of I’Corus Quinta from Broadway Liquor Distributors
  • Martin Codax Burgans Albarino 2006
  • Something else…
    

Entries are open to all, however I can only ship the wines to an Australian address. One entry per person/email address/IP address. I will anounce the winner on the 9th of July.

Good luck and thanks for reading.

I’d heard a bit about this wine before it was released: a $15 Albarino in screwcap from Vintage Cellars. It will sell by the truckload if it’s any good, I thought. Then Larry posted a comment after tasting a bottle, and it sounds quite good indeed. So I made a rare trip to my local Vintage Cellars store and picked one up, banged in the fridge for an hour or so and poured myself a glass. Yuk, completely oxidised. Buggar. The ‘cap looked OK too, no dents or anything. But its one of those Stelvin Lux plastic jobs, I’m sure if they do dent. I’ll take it back and get a new one.

However, you will be seeing a lot more wine from Spain under screwcap in the next couple of years. It would seem that regardless of any local laws or D.O. regulations, producers are installing screwcap equipment in their bottling lines and are ready, willing and able to export their wine with a screwcap keeping the wine in the bottle rather than a cork. Mainly whites at first, but the reds will come….

New Zealand is such a hard place to leave, great weather, food, views and a big range of Spanish wines at much lower prices than Australia thanks to a much more reasonable tax structure. Oh well, back to work. I should have a bunch of new stuff in to look at later in the week, so more notes will go up next week.

I took a short drive out to the Yarra Valley today, mainly to take a few photos but ended up tasting a few local Tempranillos after it started to rain about 30 minutes after I got there.  I got some ok cloud shots though. I'll give a free subscription to Tinto y Blanco to anyone who can guess where the photo is taken from.

So I tasted some wine and had a bit of a chat as why they chose to grow tempranillo and if they had a particular style they were going for.  Strangely they said it was something different, people liked it and they (the owners) had always liked tempranillo based wines. It was strange as the wines were very much in the dry red style showing very little character. Not that they were bad wines, just ordinary: a bit too ripe, too much time in new oak. Quite pricey too. One place mentioned Alion as the inspiration for their wine, I couldn't see it if it was. And they are winning gold medals at wineshows with this wine too, which makes me really question the validity of the the wine show system.

Then again we expericed this when Pinot Noir was the new cool grape to grow 20 years ago. New growing techniques and in some cases different clones were needed to really get the quality up.  Perhaps that's what Tempranillo needs. Is it vine age? I don't think so, there are a at least a couple of cracking examples the come from young vines in Australia. Perhaps the Yarra isn't the place for Tempranillo? Still, Australian growers are mostly at the start of the learning curve for Tempranillo and there is a way to go before it lives up to the hype I hear in the wine press. I bought a couple of bottles anyway, maybe all they need is some support…

My camera has suffered a bit over the break, a bit too much travel and old age has forced an early retirement.  So there will be no new pictures for a week or so until the new one turns up.  I expect the quality of the photos to increase hugely, so stay tuned.

The sidebars seem to be moving around when looking at single posts and page references are still a bit screwed, but mostly the site is working OK.  Let me know if you find any bugs and bear with me while I get it right over the next couple of days. 

I have joined up with the Boccaccio Movember team, so I will be growing a Mo this month.  I am taking next week off work, so I figure what better excuse to get hairy.  Here is the blurb:

Hi All,

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'll be growin a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about changing men's health and the fight against male depression and prostate cancer. Why…

• Depression affects 1 in 6 men…Most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide.
• Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who die from breast cancer annually.
• Men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy of males is 5 years less than females.

To sponsor my Mo please go to http://www.movember.com/au/donate, enter my registration number which is 137204 and your credit card details. Or you can sponsor me by cheque made payable to the "Movember Foundation" clearly marking the donation as being for my Registration Number: 137204. Please mail cheques to: PO Box 292, Prahran VIC 3181. All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

The money raised by Movember is donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative, which will use the funds to create awareness, fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and male depression.

For those that have supported Movember in previous years you can be very proud of the impact it has had and can check out the detail at: Fundraising Outcomes.

Movember culminates at the end of the month at the Gala Partés. These glamorous and groomed events will see Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to take home the prestigious Man of Movember title. If you would like to be part of this great night you'll need to purchase a Gala Parté ticket .

Thanks for your support

Thanks

Dave

Here are some stats on the past year:

• In July last year 1,000 people (or sites) looked at the site.  Last month, just over 12,000 dropped by.
• The top 3 search terms for the site are: Flor de Pingus, Numanthia and Manzanilla.
• For some reason there is a link pointing to the site from a US Marine Corps forum.
• The bulk of readers are Australian (59%). There is a fairly big international readership as well, with readers from USA (14%), the UK (11%) and New Zealand (4%).
• There have been 546 real comments, 4,000 spam comments.

I get the odd unsolicited email from US wine retailers, today I got 30.  Strangely, most of the emails still credit Robert Parker with these scores and tasting notes.  Its interesting to note that there seems to be something like disbelief from many of the posters on the eRobertParker BB.  I wonder if Scott Wasley will swap my old Fender Jazz Bass for a bottle of Pingus….

The one thing I did manage to have a look at during the week was a tasting of some very interesting and tasty Portugese wines and ports.  I will be adding some portugese wines in to the tasting list as they become availble.  If you have any sugestions, I'd be very interested in what is available in Australia.

For those that are interested, a few stats on the site.  In October, the site had 8000 visits with around 50,000 hits over the month and 1 Gb of traffic.  This month, we've had almost 5000 visits and its only the 12th.  And 65% of the traffic is from Australia.  I never realised that so many people were interested in Spanish wine, so I've very happy with how the site is traveling.  

I'm planning to add some more content over the next month or so, some basic Spanish wine info, Spanish wine terms and a couple of producer profiles (that I've been very slack on so far).  If there is anything that you would like to see on the site, send me an email and I'll see what I can do.