Catalan Wines

The DO Montsant 2020 harvest comes to a close

by  |  23-10-2020

Essentially all the vineyards within the DO Montsant have been picked this year. According to their official statistics, only a handful in the north are still to arrive so in effect, the harvest has closed.... more »

New DOQ Priorat wineries to know, 2020 edition

by  |  19-10-2020

The wines being produced under the auspices of DOQ Priorat are always in flux and always evolving. They have to because the region from hence they issue forth grows ever more extreme while at the... more »

A farewell to beloved Barcelona wine bar, Monvínic

by  |  05-10-2020

Monvínic, one of the first truly-dedicated wine bars in Barcelona that was once hailed as the best wine bar in the world by a Wall Street Journal columnist, finally announced last week that they’ve closed... more »
Photo by Recaredo

Bringing the restaurant to the winery

by  |  28-09-2020

What’s a winery? When you arrive to Napa Valley for the first time, don’t be shocked that no winery has a restaurant at it. Why? Surely, there’s a great synergy to be found in having... more »

New DO Montsant wineries to know, 2020 edition

by  |  21-09-2020

The Denomination of Origin Montsant wasn’t even in existence 20 years ago and yet, it’s proven to be a Spanish DO very much on the move. What started out as a collection of just a... more »

Ten tasty Catalan Grenaches for #GrenacheDay

by  |  18-09-2020

In case you actually needed an excuse to open up a bottle of Grenache, today, September 18th, is International Grenache Day! A celebration of all things that this red (as well as white, pink, and... more »

Finding Clímax in Can Ràfols dels Caus

by  |  11-09-2020

In tasting samples for articles about the Penedès region, the wines from one winery would continually appear in the top. For an article about the white wines in Penedès, “La Calma” was one of the... more »

Talking about Spain around the internets

by  |  28-08-2020

August is usually a pretty slow month of spending a few days at the beach, dinners of cold dishes, and trying to get in dog walks before walking in the sun scorches you to a... more »

In The Glass: Sangenís i Vaqué – Lo Coster Blanc 2018

by  |  14-08-2020

Everyone in marketing these days is emphasizing the importance of “the story” over all else. Those of us who drink wine like to think that what really counts is in the bottle though. Thankfully, this... more »

The wines of DOQ Priorat in 2020

by  |  30-07-2020

Having written about the wines of Priorat for nearly a decade, some readers might wonder if I’m perhaps a touch bored of, you know, year in, year out tasting Grenache and Carignan wines from these... more »