Albarín Blanco and heroic winemaking.

Anyone heard of CERVIM? I hadn't till today. I happened to come across the name whilst googling 'Albarín Blanco', an endangered grape variety native to Asturias and León in the north of Spain. The organisation was founded in Italy in 1987 and its noble mission, the research, protection and advancement of mountain viticulture, known in European viticulture as 'heroic winemaking'. So what qualifies you as a heroic winemaker? Mainly the following: terraced slopes featuring gradients of 30% or more, orographic conditions definitely not condusive to any form of mechanisation, above sea level altitudes of over 1,640 feet and viticulture on small islands. Every year CERVIM organises a three day event in Aosta Italy where a team of twenty four professional tasters and six wine industry journalists taste a total of over 600 entries from 12 European countries, exclusively from mountainous areas. This year, a total of 2 'double gold' medals, 44 gold medals and 135 silver medals were awarded. One of those golds went to a beautiful winery in Asturias, northern Spain. Bodegas Monasterio de Corias is set in a former Benedictine abbey that dates back to the 11th century. Gold medal winner Viña Grandiella is a blend of Albarín Blanco, Small Grain Moscatel and Albillo. Albarín Blanco, the signature grape in this blend, is apparently in grave danger of extinction. It is noted for its intense greenish-yellow colour, strong moscatel flavour, and relatively high alcohol content. Viña Grandiella was the only Spanish wine to be awarded a distinction at the 20th International Mountain Wine Competition, a splendid achievement for this particular appellation, 'Vinos de Calidad de Cangas'. Well done guys! Tasting notes in Spanish report the following: white fruit, apricot, peach, 'parma violets' and fennel on the nose. In the mouth, sparkling acidity, crunchiness, unctuousness and creaminess with stone fruits, ripe bananas, fresh green apple and roast coffee on the long finish. So what would you pair a Viña Grandiella and other Albarín Blancos with? Ideal pairings, I'm told, would be with fish, shellfish, pastas dishes, paellas and risottos. With production limited to only 6,600 bottles, the chances of finding Viña Grandiella in your local wineshop are probably quite remote, but what better excuse do we have for planning our next trip to Asturias? The gorgeous Cangas de Narcea Wine Route awaits us folks. LINKS. http://vinotierracangas.wordpress.com http://www.rutadelvinodecangas.com/index.php http://josepastorselections.com *US importer of wines from Bodegas Monasterio de Corias .

A level playing field for hybrid winemakers?

If anybody is planning to visit Galicia in the coming months and wants to experience the age-old tradition of drinking red country wine from a white porcelain bowl (CUNCA), don't forget to order a bottle of 'TINTO BARRANTES'. The European Union, in its infinite wisdom, has banned the growing of the hybrid grape (HDP) used to make this tannin rich, gum staining wine. Those that refused to destroy their vineyards doggedly continue to make their wines for local and not so local (Madrid) consumption, but are not allowed to label the bottles. The local government (XUNTA DE GALICIA) enforces this absurd decree with fundamentalist zeal. However, in Rheinhessen Germany they've been selling what appears to be an HDP wine called REGENT since the 1960s. Are German winemakers above the law then? Interestingly, this same beurocratic battle is being fought in the UK, where many of our now 400+ vineyards have planted the French HDP Seyval Blanc, producing quality white wines from it, even though the ever vigilant zealots in Brussels are hell-bent on stamping it out. To the barricades ladies and gentlemen!!

BARRANTES WINE FESTIVAL

Only eight weeks to go to this year's Festa do Tinto do Salnés in Barrantes, an exaltation of the famous Tinto do Salnés or Tinto de Barrantes. This exceedingly fruity wine is a deep violet tinged, blackcurrant red colour, and quite tart on the palate. Drunk from traditional white porcelain bowls or cuncas, its teeth, gum and lip staining qualities earn it the name of manchamorros or pintalabios (lipstick), enflaming the passions of simple country folk for decades and winning over sophisticated wine gurus in more recent times. Tinto do Salnés is made from the grapes of hybrid vines, often referred to by local growers as Folla Redonda (Round Leaf). They were planted in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the wake of the catastrophic destruction caused by the phylloxera beetle, 'imported' from America in the 1870s. After a day tasting some incredible Albariño with Todd Blomberg of Benito Santos Winery in Vilanova de Arousa and Honorio Noya of the Veiga Serantes Winery in Ribadumia-Barrantes, we felt that the day wouldn't be complete without relishing a few cuncas of Tinto Barrantes over an excellent 'homage' of 'pulpo á feira' and sargo (white bream) at Restaurante Tío Benito, a venerable institution whose patrons range from the humble to the rich and famous. Our wine tour guests on this occasion were Addison and Rachel Morphy who both work for notable wineries in Santa Cruz California (The Bonny Doon Vineyard and Sones Cellars). They described the wine as awesomely fruity and a definite joy to quaff. More about the festival. During the month of May, a team of professional tasters visit tiny vineyards and 'furanchos' like 'O Manco' and 'Berto O Serradeiro'. 'Furanchos' are family homes uniquely licenced to open their doors for a limited period of time in order to sell the wines they make mainly for their own consumption and are usually served up with simple fare such as cheese, ham, tinned cockles, sardines, pickled clams, queen scallops in spicy sauce, pickled mussels etc. They are superb places to get to know the local folk and are sometimes located in lovely centuries old stone cottages and are totally unpretentious and very often absurdly cheap. So how does one find them? Look out for signs that say 'Se Vende Vino de Cosecha Propia' and a few bay/laurel tree branches hanging upside down from the garage door or outer wall. Back to the festival. The best wines of the vintage are painstakingly narrowed down from around two hundred and fifty entries to just three and duly awarded gold, silver and bronze medals. These are presented to the proud winemakers at the Confraternal Lunch held on the final day of the festival. This most 'jolgorious' event (boozy) is held in the Carballeira de Barrantes where the cosecheros (winemakers) have their stands, with live music and as always in Galicia, stands that sell the omnipresent 'pulpo a féira' (octopus) and 'empanada' (a kind of pie), which are as Galician as the strolling pipers you'll see over the weekend. Those that fancy some sophisto Albariño tasting amidst all the tinto de barrantes can contact the genial Honorio Noya at Veiga Serantes, which is signposted and just a close walk from the town. http://www.veigaserantes.com Photo: Lunching at Tío Benito, Barrantes.

VEIGA SERANTES - HONORIO NOYA

A talk with Honorio Noya, our contact at Veiga Serantes, an excellent winery from Galicia’s Rías Baixas appellation and located in the Salnés Valley town of Barrantes. Tell me about Veiga Serantes and your role in its wine. Veiga Serantes is a small family winery, housed in a lovely, modern building that blends in perfectly with its surroundings, set in the very heart of the Salnés Valley (Rías Baixas), near the village of Barrantes. The Serantes family have been growing grapes and making wines for many generations, and it is this tradition and knowhow that the winery strives to reflect in its winemaking today. By paying special attention to our viticulture, it is our belief that in order to make a good, natural wine one needs the best possible grapes. The whole process, from the vineyard to market place is carried out by three people; Luis and Rafael Serantes and me. I am involved in the whole process, from helping out during pruning, canopy management and grape harvesting, through to winemaking, bottling, packaging and sales and marketing. In doing this, I can keep an eye on every stage of the process, thus acquiring a sound knowledge of the wines we make. What are the main characteristics of your wine? Our wines, Veiga Serantes and Veiga Serantes Selection, are wines that reflect the native grape variety Albariño, highly aromatic with citrus and stone fruit at the very front, and white flowers such as orange blossom on the second level, with clear mineral notes from the granite based soils of our vineyards. In the mouth it reveals a touch of lively acidity from the microclimate of the Rías Baixas region. Our wines are well assembled, round and balanced due to the fact that we take the time for them to become well integrated, this also makes them longer lasting, so they can be enjoyed even 7 to 10 years later. What kind of consumers are you aiming your product at? Our wines are mainly aimed at ‘mature’ wine drinkers, by this I mean people that drink wine regularly, people who know their stuff and are looking for wines with a typicité that truly reflects the special characteristics of the region they come from. What about exports? At this very moment we are exporting 30% of our wines, with the main markets being USA and Puerto Rico, among others like UK, China and Switzerland. What about product innovation at Veiga Serantes? Regarding winemaking we prefer to stick to the traditional old style methods, happy with the wine we have been making for many years now. So innovation at Veiga Serantes is more on the packaging and labeling side, always striving to communicate the philosophy of the winery in this particular area. What is your opinion of so-called vanguard wine making? It’s a big world out there with lots of countries and every country with its own different market segments, with plenty of wine expectations, which means there’s room for lots of different styles of wines. Personally speaking, I much prefer wines that reflect the true character of a region, wine with a clear identity. However, as a wine lover I also like to try something different, something that might surprise me and even please me, from time to time. So in short, I’m very glad that there are winemakers out there making wines in this challenging, innovative way. There are different occasions to enjoy different styles of wine. Contact: http://www.veigaserantes.com

THE SACRED RIVER SHORE

Winemaking in Galicia has long been associated with the tart, fruity white wines from the Ribeiro, Valdeorras and Rias Baixas appellations. Until very recently, Spanish and foreign tourists alike could be seen ordering classic Spanish reds such as Rioja in the region’s bars and restaurants, whilst snootily turning their noses up when recommended a Galician red. Thankfully, situations like this are now being consigned to the past, largely due to the heroic efforts of a number of pioneering individuals from the Ribeira Sacra, a wine producing area situated near the small agricultural town of Chantada, known as the Heart of Galicia.

VERTIGO TO GO

Loosely translated, Ribeira Sacra means something like sacred shore or sacred river bank. The River Miño, as it winds its way east from Ourense, cuts an ever deepening
gorge into the countryside. Oak, pine and chestnut forested slopes, dotted with precariously perched dwellings and the odd Romanesque church, plunge right down to the water line, and it’s on these vertigo-inducing slopes, on tiny granite terraces known as bancadas, that the local grape variety and flagship of the appellation Mencía is grown. In places the vertiente, or slope, is so steep that the only way to ‘evacuate’ the grapes was by boat, traditionally a flat bottomed, rectangular wooden vessel. Today that work is done by conveyor belts.

The area has long been synonymous with the grape. During Roman times, wines from Amandi, today one of the appellation’s five sub-zones, were regularly shipped to Rome to be served at the emperor’s table, along with that other great Miño delicacy, Slamprey. By the middle ages, the upper Miño began to attract monastic communities who carried on the tradition of planting vines and producing wines to be sold to the inns and hospices along the nearby Camino de Santiago.

FISH FARM PUMPS

After breakfast, we were met by the Deputy Mayor of the town of Chantada, Ildefonso Piñeiro, a dead-ringer for Robert de Niro. As our first port of call, he took us to a small vineyard belonging to his father-in-law. This was where we were able to catch the first of many stunning panoramic views of the Ribeira Sacra. Along the route he told us of the friendly rivalry that had always existed between the ribeiraos, vineyard owners, on both sides of the river. Tongue-in-cheek insults would fly between paperos, or papists on the Chantada side and rabudos (rabbis) on the Saviñao side. A typical case of back-breaking work made a little more bearble with a some cross-river verbal jousting, he confided.

ROMAN ROADS

After a few minutes meandering up and down twisting lanes, we pulled up at the gates of Adegas Vía Romana, a beautiful stone building dating back to the 16th century. The owner-director José Luís Méndez Rojo warmly greeted us, ushering us inside for a tour of the grape reception area, fermentation tanks, labelling and bottling facility, and the wonderful salon with its jaw-dropping views of the Miño. Juan Luis’s approach to wine making is firmly rooted in the pursuit of quality
over quantity, a constant of all the wineries I was to visit throughout the trip. This guarantee of quality is achieved by an exhaustive poda en verde, or pruning of the fruit before it reaches maturity, manual selection of the grapes and,
somewhat bizarrely, the use of fish-farm pumps to protect the seeds during fermentation. Damaged or bruised seeds can cause an unwanted, mouth-puckering astringency in the wine, so fish-farm pumps were evidently a wise investment for this innovative wine maker. The rest, he told us, was down to the six months of
absolute peace and tranquility the wine spends in a strictly controlled environment. About 10%of his production of Via Romana Mencía and Via Romana Selección Añada 1999 goes abroad, mainly to the USA, but more recently to Japan and Russia, with new markets being explored all the time.

A RIGHTFUL PLACE

Next on the route was Bodega Pincelo. Though the family has been making wine since the 1840s, in 1985 Bodega Pincelo became the first legally constituted winery in the province of Lugo, a crucial step in the 1993 founding of the appellation D.O. Ribeira Sacra. The owner Alfonso Regal Teijeiro said that there was still some way to go on the road to D.O. Ribeira Sacra earning its rightful place among the prime movers of the Spanish wine scene. Statistics still show that many of his paisanos or countrymen in Galicia, when ordering red wine, order Rioja instead of Ribeira Sacra Mencía. Alfonso specialises in Viño Artesano, or artisanal wine, and Pincelo, Viña Portotide and the oak-aged Pincelo 1985 are three fine examples of the genre. With an ever keen eye on the future, Bodega Pincelo is now dedicating around six hectares of its vines to the experimental production of Viños Ecolóxicos, or organic red and white wines.

QUAFFING AND NIBBLING

It was soon time to move on again and the next stop was Adegas Lareu, another family winery run by the eminently hospitable Primitivo Lareu. To describe his place as lovely would be to do it a gross injustice. The setting for this charming winery is a beautiful 18th century granite farmhouse, surrounded by huge, gnarled chestnut trees and lush fields. Our genial host showed us into the traditional Adega de Garda or storage winery, now a wine-museum, with its trodden earth floor and doors oriented to the east and tiny aperture on the west wall allowing for ventilation and a shaft of light. An ancient wooden estruxadora or wine press sat on one side, and two or three huge cubas or storage casks on the other. A couple of pellexos or animals skins, used centuries ago to transport wine, completed the display. The rest of the evening was spent quaffing his excellent Sabatelius Branco white, Sabatelius Mencía and Sabatelius Carballo , an oak-aged red, whilst nibbling away on some memorable home-made smoked chorizo. Unfortunately, all good things must to come to an end, and after some fond farewells, we set out for our last but definitely not least port of call, Adegas Moure on the enigmatically named Cabo do Mundo or Cape of the World.

THE SACRED RIVER SHORE

Cabo do Mundo means the Edge of the World. The course of the Miño here takes a dramatic 180º turn and Adegas Moure, clearly defying the laws of gravity, surveys all this awe-inspiring beauty, totally confident in the knowledge that there must be very few vineyards on this Earth that can compete with them in terms of the sheer drama of the setting. If that wasn’t enough, they’re also sweeping up award after award on the international wine circuit, with medal-snatching vinos like Abadía da Cova, Mencía Barrica, Fuga and an excellent Albariño that recently scored an impressive 90 points in Wine & Spirit Magazine, putting the wind up Rías Baixas, no doubt.

TIME HONOURED TRADITION AND INNOVATION

Evaristo Rodríguez López, Vice-President of the D.O. Ribeira Sacra and our contact at Adegas Moure echoed the words of the other wine makers we met along this most sacred of river shores. He said, “Our vineyards that descend so steeply along the Ribeira Sacra, are hundreds of years old. We’re absolutely determined to preserve our time-honoured traditions, all the things that make our wine unique, but at the same time we’re looking forward, constantly striving for the highest possible quality, investing in the latest technology and innovation and of course, focusing our efforts exclusively on improving our wine with each new vintage.” If seeing and tasting is believing, then this appellation has every reason to be justifiably proud of its wines, so the next time you’re in Spain, make sure it’s a Ribeira Sacra Mencía, you’ll be instantly smitten.

SPRING 2009

WINE TOURS IN NORTH WEST SPAIN

Highly recommenable tailor-made itineraries in Galicia, visiting Albariño wineries in jaw-dropping locations covering all five sub-zones of the Rías Baixas appellation: Val do Salnés, Val do Ulla, O Rosal, Sotomaior and Condado do Tea. Another excellent wine making region included in this tour is the stunningly beautiful Ribeira Sacra in Lugo, where wine-lovers will have the opportunity to taste wines made from the red Mencía grape and other native to Galicia varieties such Brancellao and Merenzao. For white wine there's Godello in its mono-varietal form and some innovative blends of Godello, Treixadura, Torrontés, Loureira and Doña Branca. In 2013 GrapeHop Tours plan to make an incursion into the neighbouring Bierzo region, internationally much talked about due to the Parker Guide 90+ ratings for mencías from splendid artisan vineyards such as Tilenus, Descendientes de J. Palacios, Pittacum, Altos de Losada and more. The gastronomy of both regions, seafood in Galicia, botillo, goat's cheese, roasted red bierzo peppers, empanada de patacas in El Bierzo are good enough reasons for an extended stay in the region, whatever the time of year, though GrapeHop Tours offers you the chance of visiting in late spring or early autumn, when the north-west of the Iberian peninsula is at its most captivating.

Email: bookings@grapehops.com
www.grapehops.com/tours/galicia.html

Photo: Californian winemaker Richard Longoria tasting Albariño with winemaker Paula Fandiño at Mar de Frades winery.

LITTLE GEM OF A HOTEL IN CAMBADOS

A stroll around the ancient empty streets (at least in February) of Cambados is always a joy, but when one stumbles upon this absolute pearler of a boutique hotel just a few yards from the grandeur of the Praza de Fefiñans, it's a challenge not to wander in and have a nose around. Not intending to stay the night, I meekly asked the receptionist if we could just sneak a peek. The man couldn't do enough for us. After introducing us to the charming owner of the establishment, we were given an exhaustive tour of the hotel where we saw a succession of tastefully decorated rooms with the decor accent firmly on the classic with a dash of Laura Ashley thrown in for good measure. Each room was slightly different to the previous one, with georgeously appointed, spacious bathrooms. Just before we left, the owner confided that times were extremely tough for the service sector, though luckily his establishment was already fully booked for the big summer party, the Fiesta de Albariño in August. Hardly surprising, looking at the place. I'm in absolutely no doubt that this will be the place I'll be recommending to friends in the future. Hotel Real Ribadomar also offers its customers a unique dining experience in the Restaurante Ribadomar, one of the finest seafood eateries in town, offering the best of the bountiful Ría de Arousa, but that will be the subject of another post.
www.ribadomar.es