We have been busy developing new stuff at Adegga and we’ve finally launched the new features.

Here’s what we’ve added:

• A wine blog search engine which covers more than 400 wine blogs.
• New prices and shops. We have a new wine shop search engine that includes more shops, more prices and better interface. Try this example: Wine prices for Barca Velha 1995.
• Top Wines: Top Red Wines, Top White Wines, Top 2005 Wines and many more.
• New Adegga search engine that now allows for searching on wines, producers, wine shops and wine blogs.

We’re fixing some minor bugs so if you find any or have any suggestion please let us know.

Wine Blog Search Engine
From all the new features the wine blog search engine is the one we’ll be talking a lot more in the near future. Information about a wine is not only about it’s tasting notes or technical information. There’s lots more information that is useful and available these days so we’re integrating new sources of information in order to provide access to even more useful information for each wine.

We’re indexing more than 400 wine blogs. It’s now easy to search all these blogs or check what are the latest news.

The AVIN
Together with the wine blog integration we’re finally deploying an interesting way to use our unique code for each wine - the AVIN. This code basically lets us track what is being said about a wine online and at the same time gives wine bloggers more visits and targeted visibility. See for example this wine Cortes de Cima Reserva 2003.

If you’re a wine blogger and want to learn how to get your posts listed please read this.

Like we mentioned a few weeks ago, this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday is hosted by Tim over at Winecast.net and the theme is Old World Riesling (which means wines made with Riesling from Germany, Austria or Alsace).

We’re were all looking forward for this tasting as we had a natural impulse to compare it with our own Vinho Verde. The tasting didn’t disappoing and it made learn a bit more about the grape and the regions from where we choose to drink.

The wines
We thought that buying a Riesling in Portugal was going to be an easy task but only after doing some digging we were finally able to get 2 bottles of Riesling: a Schloss Gobelsburg Riesling Urgestein 2006 and Weingut Magdalenenhof Rüdesheimer Burgweg Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken 2006

 

The Schloss Gobelsburg Riesling Urgestein 2006 is from the wine region of Kamptal which is the biggest wine region in Austria and one of the most well known for Rieslings in that country.

The Rüdesheimer Burgweg Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken 2006 (which must be one of the longest wine names ever) is made in Germany more precisely in Rheingau where main grape variety is the Riesling.

The tasting
We met for the tasting and as always we had a great time together discussing and enjoying the wines. Each of use made their own notes which are (of course) on Adegga. Here’s what each of use thought of these 2 wines.

Schloss Gobelsburg Riesling Urgestein 2006

Emídio Santos: Clean with hay yellow color. Fresh with citric aromas (lime, apple). Underlying mineral and a delicate fragrances of wood. On the palate good acidity with citric aromas and a mineral touch. Good structure with a long lasting finish. (16 in 20) (view note)

André Cid: Eye - yellow hay on the Nose - tones of peach, “nespra”, lemon and melon on the Mouth - not so profound. (14 in 20) (view note)

André Ribeirinho: A wine with a yellow-almost-white color. On the nose lots of mineral aromas. A live wine that on the palate provided evolving sense of fruit. Lemon is always present and some banana and peach coming after the initial tasting. A very interesting wine for end of the day glass of white wine. (13 in 20) (view note)

Rüdesheimer Burgweg Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken 2006

Emídio Santos: Clean pale yellow colour. Weak nose, denoting some sweetness, apple aroma with honey traces. Smooth mouth with some acidity. Very short finish. (10 in 20) (view note)

André Ribeirinho: Light yellow color. A sense of sweetness in the wine. Very very shy on the nose and on the palate. (10 in 20) (view note)

André Cid: Eye - Clear almost white Nose - citrus Mouth - sweet (10.5 in 20) (view note)

Finally
We all liked the first wine and were happy to taste all the different fruits. However at €14 we agreed that it is bit expensive for this type of wine. The second wine didn’t excite any of us. After a day (on a second tasting) Emídio found it to be a bit more interesting but nevertheless nothing special.

If you want to see other wine tasted under this tag check the wbw45 tag page.

Interesting to how see how the tags wbw, wine blogging wednesday and wbw45 have been used a lot in the last 24 hours in the wine blogosphere showing that many wine bloggers have been publishing their entries in the last couple of hours. Here’s a screenshot from a very interesting feature we’ll be launching soon that allows us to see exactly this:

The next Wine Blogging Wednesday (#46) will be hosted by Dr. Debs of Good Wine Under $20.

There’s an ongoing discussion about wine closures, mostly between cork and screwcaps. Being from Portugal I get easy access to the relevance of cork in world of wine through daily news. Cork has been since 1600’s and is the most used wine stopper. It has its problems (potential relation to TCA) but also its virtues (sustainable resource). But this post in not about that debate, but about an interesting new way to use cork: stamps.

This stamp is a limited edition (230k) created by the national postal service of Portugal (CTT). It was designed by Portuguese designer João Machado and has sold out in Portugal.

From what I could read in a Portuguese newspaper there’s high technology involved in producing the stamp. Getting cork that thin is very hard.

Now that there’s cork this thin I can’t stop thinking of all the interesting things that can be done with that. I would imagine that wine labels made of cork could be an interesting marketing experience.

There’s one thing I can guarantee. TCA won’t ruin your letters!

What the good guys at Catavino are doing for Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) wine is great. They are basically using the Web and telling the World about how great Iberian wines and wineries are. With that goal in sight, their latest project is a report on La Rioja.

Photo from the report on La Rioja
A crazy amount of work must have been taken to put together this kind of information. There’s lot’s of good stuff to see and read (and drink!). An interactive map of wineries, a local food guide and a useful how to read a La Rioja wine label.

Good thing we’ll be visiting La Rioja for the European Wine Bloggers Conference.

The three of us will be participating in WBW 45. WBW 45 is hosted by Tim over at Winecast and the theme is Old World Riesling. This means we’re going to look for a wine made from Riesling made in Germany, Austria or Alsace (Tim says Northern Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovenia are also options). The final day for submissions is Wednesday, May 7.

What is Wine Blogging Wednesday
Wine Blogging Wednesday is an original idea from Lenn Thompson. Every month a selected wine blogger hosts this monthly virtual wine tasting and selects the theme. Then, bloggers drink a wine that is consistent with the theme and blog their tasting notes on or before the Wednesday of the event.

Where to buy?
For us it shouldn’t be too difficult to find some Riesling wines from Germany, Austria or France in any of the Portuguese wine shops. If you are in America take a look at this nice three-pack from domaine547 that will also get you stocked from the next three WBWs.

We love to see new startups in the wine business, specially the ones doing something really world-changing. Richard Shaffer is doing just that by launching Israeli Wine Direct.

IWD is an online wine shop that is sourcing it’s wines from garagiste and boutique wine producers in Israel and selling them in America.

Using the Web as a marketing and sales tool, Richard is able to close the (normally big) gap between wine producers and their customers. The interesting fact is that he is doing that between Israeli wineries and American customers.

Richard has been telling all about his venture in his blog where he also writes about Israeli wineries and wine marketing.

I came across Richard Shaffer’s blog exactly while researching information on Israeli wines. I subscribed to his RSS feed and have been a reader since then.

This is the way slowly the world of wine is changing. We search for information online, we buy wine online and with initiatives like this we can more easily try wines from a different country.

We’ve supported 4 different rating scales (5 stars, 10 points, 20 points or 100 points) since we launched. One of our top requested features was the ability to rate wines using half-points. We finally implemented this.

We’re now working on allowing you to read ratings in scale you like (and not just rate). For now you can safely rate your almost perfect wine with 19.5 (or 4.5 or 9.5 or 95).

Set your default scale
To make it easier to rate a wine, you can also now choose a default rating scale in your settings. For example, if you choose the 20 points scale then all the places where you can rate will display this scale by default.

We’ve redesigned the tasting note page and it’s now easy to manage your notes.

We only show 2 fields by default (rating and note) and all extra information (tags, food pairing and tasting date) is hidden by default to make the interface more simple to use.

Wine actions
We’ve also simplified actions on a wine page so that list actions (add to cellar, add to tasted and add to wishlist) are clearly split from the rating actions (rate and write a note).

We’ve been making little interface improvements when whenever we discover a problem. If there’s a features or an interface problem that is bugging you while using Adegga, let us know so that we can fix it.

We’ve been working hard on getting a bunch of new features ready for launch (and that’s why we’ve been so silent). We’ll be rolling out this new features (and some updates) in the next couple of weeks.

To start we’ve launched today a new way to communicate on Adegga: Private Messages.

Sending a new message is very easy. You can contact anyone directly from their profile page or you can compose a new message from your account.

You also notice that the number of unread messages is always visible at the top of the page.

If you have any questions or comments lets us know.

Ryan and Gabriella from Iberian wine blog Catavino and Robert McIntosh from The Wine Conversation are putting together the first ever Wine Blogger conference.

The idea is to bring together wine bloggers from Europe and the rest of the world in a event where we can all drink, eat and have plenty of discussions.

Quoting the conference website:

It is an exciting time for those who blog regularly about wine. The trade is waking up to the benefits of interacting with bloggers, and together we represent a potential alternative to the traditional media.

We at Adegga also believe in Wine Bloggers and we’ve been developing tools (for example our Wine Blogger Accounts) that help wine bloggers promote and share their passion for wine.

The conference is happening on the 29th, August in La Rioja, Spain and we’ll be there (of course).

A lot of interesting people have confirmed they’ll also be there:

• Giampiero Nadali - Aristide (Italy)
• Ryan & Gabriella Opaz - Catavino (Spain)
• EBacchus Wine (USA)
• Jacob Gaffney & Sean Sellers - InterWined.com (UK)
• Andrew Barrow - Spittoon.biz (UK)
• Andrea Gorri - Vino da Burde (Italy)
• Aldo Wink - Vinoo.eu (Netherlands)
• Justin Roberts - Vinos de Jerez, etc. (Spain)
• Eduardo Benito - Vinustv.es (Spain)
• Robert McIntosh - The Wine Conversation (UK)
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If you’re coming and would like to meet, drop us an email.