Perhaps the worst timed mailshot of all time?

You would think that someone may have had the sense to either postpone this mailshot, or at the very least, change one of the photos.

At the very height of the E. coli scandal in Germany, with people allegedly dying from eating Spanish cucumbers, would you send out a mailshot effectively saying "we have a safer way of transporting your produce", and then include a photo of a sliced cucumber? Perhaps they are implying that the produce might have been sabotaged whilst in transit? Whatever the intention I am not quite sure whether this is an example of very opportunistic marketing or it is just plain stupid!

Spain is now faced with a huge problem (regardless or not as to whether the outbreak did originate from these shores). The speculation alone has done untold damage to the export of  a large proportion of fresh Spanish produce around Europe, in a typical knee-jerk backlash. Millions of euros are being lost on a daily basis, and in the midst of an enormous economic crisis, Spain can ill afford it.

I must say that I find it uncharacteristically irresponsible of the Germans to point the finger at Spain without conclusive, irrefutable evidence. Talk about kicking a country when it's down....

Q2). What grape is Pinot Noir made from?

Stupid question? Hmm, well, you might not believe the answer, depending on which brand you have been buying! For example, in the case of Red Bicyclette your pinot noir has, until now, been made of a blend of pinot, syrah and merlot! Produced for the wine giant E&J Gallo in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France, the authorities became suspicious when they discovered that the volume of pinot noir being sold to Gallo actually exceeded the total production for the region.

The actual numbers were fairly spectacular - Between 2006-08, Sieur d’Arques apparently sold 135,000 hectolitres of the vin de Pays d’Oc labelled pinot noir to E&J Gallo at a value of 4 million Euros. Yet the total actual Pinot Noir production from the winemakers supplying the distributors was just 15,000 hectolitres a year, so even if the region’s entire Pinot Noir acreage was devoted to making Red Bicyclette for E & J in the States, it would still be impossible.

To make matters worse, this was the defence offered in the ensuing court case: The pinot 'manufacturers' claimed that "Pinot Noir could be considered as a brand, expressing a taste and given qualities and not a particular variety"! Imagine the possible consequences if this wisdom was to be widely adopted...... Chateau Cheval Blanc made from a blend of cinsault and gamay, Batard Montrachet from reichensteiner and muscadelle? The entire wine world would be turned on it's head.

The other defence argument was that “personne n’a été trompé, puisque tous savaient.” No one was conned, they say, because everybody along the chain knew about it, and nobody was harmed - except of course the poor end consumer who was paying for his pinot noir in good faith.

Apart from being totally unscrupulous and beyond belief, it does actually raise some fairly serious questions about the origins of wine, and it's authenticity. Even in our own region rumours abound as cheap wines appear on shop shelves despite the rising price of grapes, but of course this might be just petty jealousy or hearsay - you just never know.

The only thing that I can guarantee our own customers is that every bottle that leaves our cellar is 100% Albariño (our regulations dictate that it has to be 100% to mention the Albariño variety on the label). I therefore challenge anyone to carry out whatever tests, or tastings that they wish to prove otherwise.

Big Brother is watching you!

Nothing to do with wine, or the bodega, more just an observation from my recent travels around the UK.

Now, I often moan about the traffic and bad driving here in Spain, not to mention the latest toy of the local traffic police.... the dreaded speed camera, but the UK is now in a different league altogether!

Having driven the length and breadth of the UK over the last week I was truly shocked by the number of cameras that you see along the way. Not just fixed cameras that snap your photo as you drive past, but also the new-fangled 'average speed cameras' that calculate your average speed over long sections of the motorway.

I did not actually witness it myself, but I am also given to understand that the majority of UK town and city centres are now filled with surveillance cameras, whereby you can hardly take a step outside without being monitored. Talk about Orwell's 1984, it really has become very intrusive.

But wait just a moment - perhaps I can actually top this story! The Kent police, in the south east of England, are now considering using unmanned drones that will fly at 20,000ft to record all your misdemeanors without you even knowing it (assuming that the weather is good, and it's not too cloudy!)

I really wish that I was joking, but this is all very sadly true.

Snowed under.... in paperwork!

Frozen Britain

As large swathes of Europe grind to a halt in blizzard conditions, the snow that was threatened around the city of Pontevedra came to nothing more than a very light 'dusting' - hardly enough to break out the snowboard....

Sure, it's been pretty chilly for the last week or so, with frost nearly every night, but nothing like the -21°C experienced in Scotland recently - colder than the average domestic deep freeze, and on a par with the South Pole. Indeed such extremes of temperature bring problems that are not encountered in normal everyday life, such as the diesel in the tank of your car turning to jelly!

So, where does paperwork enter into the story? Well, it's just another example of the incredible volume of admin and/or beaurocracy that is sometimes required to complete even a very trivial task in this country. To cut a very long story short, I went to our local hardware store to collect an electric drill that had been left for minor repair (annoyingly just out of warranty). On face value, a simple task.... or so I thought.

After one hour, involving two people, visiting two offices, necessitating eight sheets of paper (six A4 size), and then signing two of them, I was finally presented with the invoice....... 23 Euros + tax!!!! You have to ask yourself the obvious question - how on earth can this be cost effective?

I just can't believe what I am seeing!

The picture as it appears on the website

After yesterday's little rant about a Californian journalist, today I am almost at a loss for words!

Like every denomination or appellation on earth our production is strictly controlled. We face tough rules and regulations that we are obliged to follow, some good, others not so good, but all designed to protect the end consumer.

In our own area, not only do we have the local D.O. office who control the vineyards, and every step of our production, through quality control to final bottling, but then we also have the local fraud office, who will ensure that your stock is correct, and that every bottle is labelled correctly etc., etc. In the case of the latter, the fraud office will even penalise you if the lettering on your label is just 1mm too big, or 1mm too small, or if your bodega address is not correct.

Now, as I have already stated, this is not exclusive to our region, and these regulations apply in pretty much every wine producing area in the world. So what's my point?

Well, yesterday evening Angela stumbled across a new website relating to the wines of our D.O. which even carries the name 'vino albariño' in it's web address. On face value the site looks innocuous enough, giving good detail about our region and it's sub zones. It also includes details of local hotels and restaurants, with many links to some useful websites around Galicia.

BUT THEN..... The part I could not believe.

They have a page that offers wine by mail order - they call it 'Artesan Wine', and they are selling it over the internet completely WITHOUT LABEL! (See photo above)

How can this be? Surely this must be illegal? Is there anyone out there who has ever seen this before, or who thinks that this is an acceptable practise? Your comments please!