Absolute euphoria for Álvaro Ribalta and Thomas Luke Parker, the winning pair of the 18th wine competition held at the Llotja in Barcelona and organized by the shop and distributor Vila Viniteca. The winners took home €35,000 for blind-tasting fourteen wines, divided into two rounds. In the morning, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, participants had to guess seven wines, and in the afternoon, starting at 4:30 p.m., seven more. Of the fourteen wines, the winners correctly identified the country, region of origin, appellation of origin, grape variety, vintage, producer, and brand. In other words, an immeasurable feat, within reach of the very best, and probably also a matter of luck, because in a competition of this kind there is a very high percentage of study and professional expertise (hence the large number of participants being winemakers and sommeliers) and another of unconscious courage.

Siscu Martí (Esparreguera, 1956) is a farmer, a winemaker at the family estate of Ca N'Estruc, in Esparreguera, and co-owner of the largest wine distributor and shop in Catalonia and the State, Vila Viniteca, which distributes seven million bottles and has a turnover of 11,500. More than thirty years ago he and his friend Quim Vila, whom he met one day at a wine tasting, decided to open a wine shop on Agullers street in Barcelona, Next to the La Teca grocery store, the Vila family business, where they sold cheeses, fruit, vegetables, and in a small space, winesSiscu and Quim Vila own three wineries – Ca n'Estruc and two others in the Rueda DO and Madrid – and Siscu handles the financial side of the wine business. On January 8th, they will launch their online store through the Vila Viniteca website. Registrations for the new Pairs Tasting competitionThis year's wine tasting event in Barcelona, which in recent years has sold out in just a few hours, is one of the initiatives of Vila Viniteca that Siscu is excited to co-organize with Quim Vila. He personally provides the notary each year with the names of the wines that the participants will have to guess.

The prestigious Danish winemaker Peter Sisseck, known for his Pingus and Flor de Pingus wines (DO Ribera del Duero), with prices of more than a thousand euros, rules out "making wines in Priorat because the Catalan designation of origin has a good part of the slate soil", taking into account that he is specialized in calcareous soil and, He knows that the DO Montsant does have limestone soil, but he also rules it out..

Maximilian Riedel, the eleventh generation of the family that created Riedel glasses, has visited Barcelona to explain to Catalan fans how a wine can become very bad if we don't drink it from the right glass. And he made his point with a statement we'll all agree with: "Life is too short to drink bad wines."

Maxime France and Pierre Citerne are the winning couples of the seventeenth Vila Viniteca Couples Tasting Competition, held this Sunday at the Casino de Madrid. For the first time in the competition organized by Catalans Quim Vila and Cisco Martí, the winners took home 35,000 euros. Peter Srijs and Stijin Verleyen came in second, and Alberto Botía Gomzález and Eduardo Dequidt Herrero came in third.

Sergio Caballero and Francesc Grimalt came to an agreement almost 20 years ago. Two million pesetas each. And so, in a modest way, 4Kilos Vinícola was born, one of the best Mallorcan wineries, which works with recovered native varieties and is probably not like any other winery in the world.