Like us, we know you appreciate delicious food and fine wines.  There is nothing more relaxing than enjoying a good meal and a glass of your favourite wine at the end of a long working week.its the best way to let steam off. Drinking a good wine delivers a real sense of place and character and brings a little slice of the vineyard into your own home.

First hand experience of La Rioja

Imagine how much more your appreciation would be enhanced if you could experience the sights, sounds and flavours of your favourite wine region first hand.you don’t have to be a massive wine connoisseur, just a fan!   There are dozens of wine tasting holiday packages available, ranging from the commercial tourist treks that  whisk you  through the terroir on an air-conditioned coach to the more intimate walking holidays that give you the space and time to walk through a wine region, drinking in the atmosphere and sampling the local food as well as tasting the wines.

La Rioja

We think an active holiday for wine buffs is best done at your own pace.  For a truly personal holiday, we like companies that offers tailor made packages to the smaller, beautiful and often underappreciated regions of Spain, such as La Rioja for example.going with a small group of friends and a trust worthy guide will help you appreciate wine even more.

Why La Rioja

The gateway to La Rioja is Bilbao, famous for Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum and the magnificent Mirador de Tolono is less than an hour away with magnificent views across the wine growing region.if you head down into the valley of Rio Ebro your right amongst the wine production are in La Rioja where a combination of wine tasting and walks and meals can be enjoyed.The local food comprises of seafood from the northern coast and meats from the plains to the south of Rioja.sommeliers serve up each course with a different wine to compliment the food.

going to a traditional winery gives you sample of how much care and attention goes into making a bottle of wine.one the oldest wineries called Muga uses traditional methods in winemaking, using only oak barrels and casks.If your a wine lover and enjoy active holidays then La Rioja is the perfect place to go.you can experience the lifestyle behind the wines and enjoy the history of the region and culture. Packages of varying lengths can be booked, but if nine days walking in the countryside, even if it is to drink some superb wines, sound like too much effort there are shorter weekend options that take in the main attractions and deliver a more intensive, but equally rewarding, experience.

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Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 “Pale plonk packs an acidic punch!” says the BBC, Well, it does and it doesn’t. Different grapes have different acid levels, it also depends on how long the wine has been in contact with the teeth. For example, wine merchants usually sample around 5 - 50 wines per day, they do this by holding the wine in their mouth for around 60 seconds. A typical drinker of wine doesnt do this, this is the reason that a trypical wine drinker doesnt damage their teeth as much as a sampler, the acid of the wine doesnt get time to activate. Loads of noise on twitter for the story on http://twitter.com/winewarecouk and White wine actually do to teeth?

It should be pointed out that the erosion of teeth by wine is the result of extensive wine use that would also lead to damaged liver and all sorts of other problems. The typical wine drinker who sips a glass of wine at dinner or with their evening meal should not be ‘scared off’ by the tooth decay headlines, remember 100 year old women in Italy swear that wine was the secret of their longevity.

White wine stains teeth:

I think that anyone who has drank a few glasses of Red would agree that, yes, it does. Has it ever crossed your mind how this is? “Red wine, unlike white, contains a highly-pigmented substance known as chromogen,” explained Dr. Wolff of the New York University College of Dentistry, they goes on to explain that “The acids in wine create rough spots and grooves that enable chemicals in other beverages that cause staining, such as coffee and tea, to penetrate deeper into the tooth”.

Notice that Dr Wolff said wine and not simply White wine, all wine has the ability to cause dental erosion, only Red wine has the added ability to show this on your teeth.

How can we stop the erosion of teeth?

1) Alkaline mouthwashes are highly recommended

2) Proper brushing of your teeth with a soft tooth brush is encouraged.

3) Drink should be enjoyed with food, this can be any type of food but this helps start the mouths mineralisation.

4) Don’t brush your teeth for at least 30 mins after food, this helps minerals to heal the tooths structure.

5) Cheese can also help as it contains calcium in a high concentration

I hope this is helped a little towards taking away the fear factor of White wine.

Anyone fancy a drink now

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At Classic Wine Direct we’re pretty upfront about what we do – we can’t compete with supermarkets on price so we offer wines from off the beaten track instead. these wines tend to be more full of taste and better quality. people who drink wine don’t really know the true value of wine.

the chief executive for the wine trade confirmed many of the deals are a rip off.

The fact that a leading player in the wine business had admitted that consumers were being conned caused many a raised eyebrow.

half price deals are not in fact deals at all according to Spiret. Put simply, a bottle reduced from £7.99 to £3.wines are more likely to be worth £3.99.the first place of 99.

retails brands use the policy of marking up and then mark down. customers presume they are getting quality wine at great prices. Confused? thats what we think generally.

the majority of the wine market is obsessed with the £3.99 price bracket.having a cheap wine price bracket will make retailers try different marketing tricks.

Spiret thinks consumers know they are getting misled and they get use to it. At the end of the day, it just leads to the impoverishment of the wine trade”.

Spiret’s gives us an inside view of the true tricks in which wine is sold by the big retailers. the retailers view the customers are lazy.

spiret was making us aware of the tricks of marketing wine.

two thirds of the wine sales are taken up by the supermarkets.

do they really get a bottle for £7.99 of value from a £3.99 bottle then it follows that it will be much harder for the independent wine retailer to sell something whose real value is (and always was) £7.99.

this type of marketing leaves it open to all sorts of underhand practices.

However, if the political mood continues to be against discount selling for alcohol, it will be interesting to see how the big retailers find a real price for wines they have knowingly mis-sold for the last 10 years.

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