Last night, we opened a bottle of the 2004 Viladellops from D.O. Penedes. A simple rustic looking sunflower adorns the label with the name of the wine placed to the right of the sunflower. The bright yellow flower bleeds into the lettering slowing changing to a metallic silver by the end of the name upon a cranberry colored background. The bottle is simple and one dimensional, perfectly matching both the wine and their website.

Personally, when I do research on a wine, I hope to find something of use. I not only want information about the bodega itself, including a little history and viticulture, but I also want to know what they have RECENTLY produced. Why is it that when I jump on Bodega Viladellops website, I am given three lines telling me about their viticulture, zero information about the history of the bodega, harvesting pictures that give me no context and absolutely nothing on their current vintages? I would absolutely love to give you more information about this Bodega, but I am left empty-handed both by their website and by Penin’s guide (the Spanish wine bible for facts and figures). This is the perfect example of Ryan’s article about winery’s continual folly of not providing accurate basic information. We did contact the winery, and if and when we hear back from them, we will happily pass on the information to you.

As for the wine itself, basic. Ryan and I differ a little on the wine, but our general rating is the same, 3 grapes. Upon opening it, I personally, found the wine to have a nice round bouquet of light-roasted coffee, cherry, dark chocolate and black olives. The palate equally was round and subtle but lacked complexity, depth or structure. Whereas Ryan disliked it from the beginning, finding it to be overly basic and rough; however, allow me to preface his note by saying that we both weren’t thinking when we opened it with our pasta dinner paired not with tomato sauce, but rather with mussels, fennel and sausage. The pairing was horrific, and didn’t permit the wine to truly show its graces until after the meal, and by that time, I feel as if we had already written it off as a great wine to have with pizza, but not one to stand alone or with a five course meal.