Author name: ssw

I turned up at a friend’s house the other day clutching a bottle of Bespén Blanco by Luis Oliván. It’s a delicious, dry white wine from Somontano, and my hunch is that it’s going to be a real winner as the warmer weather starts rolling in. My friend eagerly accepted the offering – and rightly […]

I was in La Caníbal – one of my favourite Madrid restaurants – the other night with some friends over from the UK. One of the great things about La Caníbal is they have an amazing wine selection – and quite a few on tap. So you get to try a full range of wines

Cava is one of Spain’s best known and best loved sparkling wines, or vinos espumosos, and alongside Rioja is one of the country’s most successful wine exports. But over the last decade or so it has been overshadowed by the likes of Prosecco and other, more cheaply made, but more aggressively marketed, sparkling wines. So, what’s

On a purely scientific level, wine is made by the yeasts feeding on the sugars which occur naturally in grapes and converting them into alcohol. This is called fermentation. But while the science might sound straightforward, the process of getting from a grape in the vineyard to a glass on the table is often a

We may all love wine, but not everyone stops to think how the wine they’re drinking got to the glass. But for those that do, we thought we’d outline the process from grape to glass. This article focuses on the process of making white wine. But we also have an article on How Red Wine is

Order a glass of red wine in any bar in Spain and you’ll almost always be asked whether you want a “Rioja or a Ribera”. They are two of the best-known Denominaciones de Origen (DOs), and the ‘go-to’ red wines for Spanish wine fans around the world. But popular as they are, even quite seasoned wine drinkers

Hear the name Catalunya and you’ll probably think of Barcelona. And with it comes visions of tourist hoards traipsing down the Rambla, queueing for the Sagrada Familia, and topping up the tan on the city beach. But this part of Spain has something far more engaging than the region’s capital – wine. Lots of it.

The north-west of Spain is a far cry from the sunny snapshots of the average holiday brochure. It’s always been rather cut off from Castilla y León and the rest of Spain by mountains, and that sense of isolation persists even today. So Galicia’s lush, green landscapes, windswept beaches, mountain ranges and river valleys, are a