Author: Fabio Bartolomei

This post is about the bad things which have happened to me recently. Specifically, it’s about how my wines have turned into vinegar this year! Just a few weeks ago I had yet another lot go bad on me (this time about 2000 liters of Garnacha from Sierra de Gredos), which I poured down the… Continue reading Natural Wine Catastrophe

From Fabio Bartolomei: Grapes in, wines made, wines being made: Albillo. This year, I made my first ever lot of Albillo. Seeing I’ve just moved into my new bodega in El Tiemblo, in the Gredos mountain range, I just had to make some Albillo. It seems that this is a variety that is in danger… Continue reading Harvest Report 2013 – Spain – Vinos Ambiz

At last! Hooray! After ten (10) years of thinking about it, and writing about it, and talking about it, I’ve finally done it! I’ve planted about 150 vines in the empty spaces in the Carabaña vineyard, where a vine was missing for one reason or another. I decided to plant Tempranillo, because the vineyard is… Continue reading Planting New Vines

There seems to be a lot nonsense being written about orange wines lately, including by writers/bloggers who should know better. I’m not going to name any names, because there’s no need to, ie if you’re reading this post then you’re a wine-geek and you’ll have read all the other recent posts on orange wine and… Continue reading Orange Wine at Vinos Ambiz

This seems a good moment to post a progress report on all my wines and experiments from 2012, because it’s the deepest, darkest coldest point of the year here in central Spain, so the wines have already progressed and developed and evolved a bit, and they’re already showing an indication of how they’re going to… Continue reading Vinos Ambiz Progress Report – Wines of 2012

Back in April this year, I wrote a post about my back-label dilemma. Basically, I was wondering exactly what (and how much) information to put on my next batch of back-labels, both from a practical and also from a legal point of view. And whether I should include what the wine does NOT contain and… Continue reading My Back-Label Dilemma Revisited – and Resolved!

Here’s another harvest post or update of the state of my harvesting this year. This is a good time for me to write this because I’m between harvests, as it were 🙂 I’ve brought in all the red grapes that I’ll be bringing in this year, and the white grapes are not ready to be… Continue reading Red grapes all in, White not ready yet

So, next morning I duly arrived late for my meeting (1 hour late) as tradition demands (!) but they (José Pastor, Chris Barnes and Mark Middlebrook) out-Spanished me by arriving 1½ hours late. Not to worry though, because I took the time to have an extra coffee and to fiddle with my new SmartPhone, which… Continue reading Hanging Out With My Importer

As I’m sure you all know, there’s no such thing as the “Natural Wine Movement”, except in the sociological sense, ie in the same way that there’s a “Risky Sports Movement”, a “Recycling Movement”, a “Real Ale Movement”, etc. There’s not really a Secret Inner Ruling Council (even though I leaked the agenda from the… Continue reading The Natural Wine Movement (and my Back-Label Dilemma)