Wine professionals do drink beer, sometimes

Ok, ok, so I took a beer when I travelled to the UK trying to find an importer for our wines. No further comments.

Emilio Saez van Eerd

The blogging Spanish Wine Exporter

Blogger’s Tastings in London and Cork

This week I will be traveling to the UK and Ireland, as you can see on my Dopplr account. It is a business trip, and I will visit some importers and agents. But as I wrote in my Dopplr me post, what do you do after these “official” business visits?

The answer in theory is simple: tasting with bloggers, any blogger, just bloggers who blog, not only wine bloggers.

In London, I will meet Robert Mcintosh, and we will probably meet Angella from tastingssessions as well. In Ireland, we meet the Bubblebrothers. By the way, Bubblebrothers opened today with a post about our upcoming visit on their blog. It will be fun to see how we can transform boring hotel nights into exciting fun wine tastings.

Do you want to come to one of the tastings? Let me know.

Keep you informed about the tastings!

Emilio

Dopplr me and let’s taste some wine soon!

I just read a great post about Dopplr from Ryan Opaz of Catavino. He claims that every (wine) export manager should use Dopplr, and I totally agree with him. Of all the tools on internet, I know Dopplr is probably one of the most interesting ones for people who travel a considerable amount like me.

Dopplr is a tool that can be used to meet people in cities where you are traveling to.  Thanks to Dopplr, you can see who’s going to the same events, same cities, and even the same hotel as you are.  So it’s perfect way to keep in touch with people you know on your trip abroad. Plus, they not only explain the tool in a very simple, and user-friendly way, but the actual use of it is equally painless. The effort that’s required is that you discipline yourself to use it.

I am an export manager, I blog, and now I am trying out Dopplr as well.

One of the great things of being an export director for a winery is that you always have wine in your neighborhood (or “close by”), especially when you travel. When a wine export manager travels to a client, a wine fair or a tasting, normally he takes along a few bottles extra, just in case. But one thing a wine export manager hates to do is to bring unopened wine bottles back home.

Important tip for bloggers who like wine!

What bloggers should know about a wine export manager who travels, because there is a good chance that he/she has some extra bottles on hand. So what happens if I’m interested in meeting up with a few wine bloggers, or if a few bloggers want to meet me? Nothing easier than a short message saying, “Hi Emilio, I see you are in London. Why don’t you come over with a bottle of your wine and we’ll pair it with some food”.  Everybody who travels has to eat, don’t they? And eating alone can be very unpleasant sometimes. So, night time, after working hours, is the perfect time to meet each other, anywhere.

I will be the Mr. Nice Guy that brings along some great wines, just so that we can chat about wine together. I think this is a much more attractive alternative than sitting alone in your hotel room watching a stupid movie you actually don’t want to see anyhow.

So I invite bloggers around the world, traveling or not, to following me through Dopplr. And If you share your Dopplr with me, or send me a message that you are interested to meet up on one of my next travels, please let me know, and I guarantee you a bottle of our wine - assuming that I have some with me. If not, we will send a sample afterward.

See my dopplr here: http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/Emilio

And do contact me.

Cheers

Emilio

Mechanical Harvesting at La Casa de las Vides

Despite the general view that everything in the wine industry should be romantic, instead of industrial, many wineries prefer to sell the consumer an idealistic and traditional image of the wine sector - or at least that’s my experience here in Spain. Grapes are hand-picked and should not be harvested by a machine. Mechanical harvesting is like a taboo, although this is not true for the producer. If he can, he will prefer to do the harvest mechanically. Nevertheless, the consumer thinks that only big industrial wineries use mechanical harvesting for industrial (cheap) wines.

We are not the only small winery in Spain that uses a machine to harvest the grapes, nor are we the first one to use a machine. However, we might be one of the first wineries to talk about it in public through our blog.

Mechanical harvesting has some advantages for a small company like La casa de las vides. I spoke with Ana Martin Onzain, one of the top wine makers in Spain who also helps in the production of La Casa de las Vides wines, regarding her impressions regarding mechanical harvesting.  For more photos click on slideshow of the casavides harvest 2008

1. What are the advantages in the use of mechanical harvesting in our winery?

First of all, the harvest machine is one of the best inventions in the wine industry as of recent; and the machine we used for the 2008 harvest is one of the latest models. It is important to know the conditions of each winery, and the type of wines the winery wants to make, in order to prepare the vineyards properly.

2. What is the main reason to use mechanical harvesting?

High temperatures and the lack of skilled workers! In general, the harvest takes place in August and September. The temperatures are high, sometimes up to 35 or 40 degrees Celsius in Valencia! Hence where do you get people who want to work under these conditions? And even if you have people, you must be sure they really understand how to cut the bunches. Mechanical harvesting is a solution to both problems at the same time.

3. And what are the conditions?

Another important reason to use a mechanical harvesting is the proximity of the vineyards to the winery. The grapes can head into the winery about 10 to 15 minutes from the vineyards. However, if the grapes come from further away, the risk of oxidation, especially for the white grapes, would be too high.

It is important to know that the winery does not make high-end wines - meaning wines that are valued at 50 euros or more. Additionally, the winery doesn’t have bush vines. This is a problem for many traditional regions in Spain, as many wine growers still have bush vines, and consequently, a harvest machine cannot help them.

And as La Casa de las Vides has planted many different grape varieties, flexibility is important. You want to harvest the grape at just the right moment. A big advantage for the winery is the flexibility to decide when to harvest. You don’t have to depend on a group of people to help you, as long as the vineyards are well prepared, one to two people can do the harvest.

4. What do you mean when you say, “preparing the vineyards”?

You can only use mechanical harvesting if you really prepare the vineyards in such a way that only the best bunches of grapes with no signs of rot are left on the vine. Also, all the leaves must be taken away in order to be sure that the machine will only “suck up” the grapes through a machine similar to a vacuum cleaner.

The conditions at La Casa de las Vides makes it easy to use the harvest machine. Within a maximum of 10 to 15 minutes, all the grapes are transported to the winery. And if we take in consideration the harsh weather conditions, the harvest machine must start early in the morning.

5. How does the machine actually work?

This machine in particular is one of the latest models. Nowadays, harvest machines are much more sophisticated than ten years ago. It doesn’t only “cut” the bunches through vibration, it also de-stems the grapes. About 4000 kilograms are brought to the winery in ten minutes, ready to go directly into the fermentation tanks. The grapes arrive at the winery in perfect condition, without their leaves. There is no need at all to do a second selection of the grapes.

Note: The grapes, especially the white grapes, don’t risk oxidation, because we use carbonic snow (Solidified carbon dioxide) to cool down the grapes. This process is expensive, but really necessary especially here in Valencia with the high temperatures.

Note: Casavides.com likes to thank Ana Martin Onzain to share her knowledge with us and our readers. For any question you might have about Spanish wines, vines in general please drop an email or leave a comment.

The pioneers of the European wine bloggers tasting

The wine bloggers conference gave me a real boost to get started with my blog.

What did I expect from the European Wine Bloggers Conference? Not much and everything at the same time. After the conference, I find that I am still a little bit confused about the whole blogging thing. I know that a blog does not guarantee me anything from a commercial point of view. It will, without any doubt, cost me time, which I will not have as I will be traveling a lot. Nobody here in Europe seems to care about it, and those who do are labeled a “geek”. So where does that leave me? I am not a geek - or am I ? - and I don’t get  much out if it, at least not in the short term, and my clients don’t care at this point, as I haven’t posted anything (yet). So why do I want to blog, spend precious time, money and energy, WHY?

I think I got the answer in Logroño!

I guess it is the same as with learning about wine. When you start you get enthusiastic about it. Then you really need to go into it to fully understand all the concepts. I remember when I was studying wine, I had some moments when I thought: “I am never going to learn everything about wine”. But when I found myself talking to winemakers a few years later at wine fairs or tastings and contributing to detailed wine conversations, I must admit that I have come a pretty long way.  Something similar, I hope, will happen with wine blogging. As a new wine blogger, I’m really excited about my own blog, casavides.com. The more I get into it, and the EWBC helped a lot, the more I know I have to learn more everyday. But in the end, I hope I will be able to say that blogging has become a part of my way of working, that many of my new contacts are made through my own or other bloggers´blogs.

Of course, it was great to meet a few more wine bloggers in person, but what I like the most from the conference was the drive behind them. Some are doing some amazing technical things on the Internet like Doug from ablegrape and the guys from adegga. Others are completely focused on their own winery, one country, or one region, a grape, whatever. In the end, what counted was that approximately 40 bloggers from Europe gathered to exchange experiences on how to use a blog to communicate wine and wine culture. It was one of the most dynamic get togethers in the wine world I have ever had.

For me the big question remains: how will the blog casavides.com help me to get our brand known in the big world, and how will its presence be translated into sales. On the Internet, I am pretty sure I know what to do to get better rankings etc., especially after a few sessions at the conference when I heard some pretty interesting things about ratings, micro retailing, and so on. But will that help me to get better known in the “real world”? Of course, I will talk about my winery, and about wine from Valencia and Spain, and I will even talk about other wines on my page - although I still don’t know how to sell this to the owners of the winery. They probably think I am the crazy guy running around with the camera all day, asking them if they have a good story.

I guess all bloggers are pioneers, which is probably the best part of the conference: sitting together with fellow passionate pioneers knowing that what we do will make a difference.

Hasta luego

Emilio