Confessions of a Wino

I had to smile at yet another special offer using the recession friendly “staying in is the new going out” mantra.  However, when I logged on to enter my Freixenet code on the top of my bottle, I discovered it is merely a way of capturing personal data for marketing spam.

The offers are the same, or barely more than the companies offer to anyone who subscribes from the web.

So save the trouble, the time, and the spam.  By all means use emusic, LOVEFiLM, or Vie at Home, and you should definitely stay in one night and try a bottle of Freixenet Cava – it’s pretty good.  Just do all the above independently.

I was idling through my Google Analytics stats wondering who on Earth (other planets are available) reads this website and how they stumble across it?

Clearly many use Google, and compose some search string or other that chances upon a random thing I have written.  It amused me to see that the most commonly used search string (2.1% of total visitors) to find Confessions of a Wino in the last month was “Freixenet pronunciation”.  It proved that Google was quite clever to read my text to at least some degree semantically.  Perhaps more important, though, was the marketing lesson….or maybe not.

Does it help to have a brand that 90% of people cannot pronounce?  Does that make people go to the trouble of finding out?  Or does it just inhibit them from asking for your product, if for example, like many sparkling wines, it is behind the counter?

For the record, my mate Paul, who can speak Spanish having spent 7 years there, says it is pronounced Fresher-Nett.  And if you don’t want to ask for it, cases of 6 are available from your local Costco.  Fill your trolley…

It is 15th January 2008 and I am at the end of my New Year detox.  I am not sure whether it is time to celebrate or commiserate.  Maybe I am a tad masochistic but I enjoyed it more than ever this year.

Nonetheless, this afternoon at a board meeting I had a large black coffee, and I would have eaten some chocolate biscuits had they been on offer.  For lunch I had a fat filled chicken mayonnaise sandwich.  Tonight, I felt I ought to complete a hat trick of poisons.  I felt obliged to sack my temporary tee-totalism.

I was ill over Xmas so didn’t drink much anyway.  However, on NY eve I got totally mullered on champagne and that is the last alcoholic drink that passed my lips.  So, to celebrate the end to my New Year dry period, I thought I might start again where I left off, and open some bubbly.

(more…)

La Bocana is a great waterfront bar just at the entrance to the harbour so you can watch all the idiots powerboating in and out, in what Jeffo calls their “penis extensions”.

(more…)

Now, we already know that the Spanish football team is ever the under-achiever.  Possibly only England can compare to their dismal lack of success when matched against national expectation.  But what are they like at making wine?  In a wine competition, I suspect the English would contrive to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.  However, I think Spanish wine is pretty good on average, and maybe they finally have a sport to excel at.

Firstly let me clear up the fact that I am about to review a wine that claims it is from Spain but many would say it is made in Catalunia.  Without getting into Iberian politics perhaps I’ll move on to this rather nice Cava (pronounced more like cava in cavalier than “carver” as most people seem to say).  But that’s not the only pronunciation problem here since the Cava is named Freixenet and as best as I can establish that is pronounced like Fresher-net.

Still, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition when I asked for the wine at my local Co-op supermarket. (more…)