How the white wine boom transforms Galice

Madrid and Barcelona have always been left to tourists rather than natives in August, but now that summers are more and more hot, more and more Spaniards are heading north rather than in the south or east for their summer holidays. A main beneficiary of this is the wealthiest, coolest and greenest region in Spain, Galicia in the far northwest, which is also increasingly interesting for wine lovers.

In recent years, Galicia, of which four five wine regions mainly have produced white wines, has attended tangible and bankable proof of world wine drinkers to go from red to whites because several important producers of Spanish red wine have invested there. Three years ago, Tempos Vega Sicilia, producer of the most famous Ribera del Duero Red (about 360 miles in the southeast), announced an investment of 20 million euros in not only vineyards but a cellar to be ready next year in the main Galician wine region, Rías Baixas. The Alma Carraovejas group, owners of another much appreciated producer in Ribera del Duero, Pago de Carraovejas, had already acquired Viña Meín in Ribeiro a little more inside the land in 2019. And the important producer of Rioja Cvne acquired the Val in Rías Baixas, in the Virgen region in Valdi a long time ago in 2002. Ribera del Duero created its Sil Valdeorras Bodega o Luar do Sil in 2015.

All this external attention was a bit of a shock for part of Spain which always felt a little isolated and clearly different from the dominant Spanish current. Certainly Albariño has been in vogue for many years. It is by far the main grape of Rías Baixas. Since the 1990s, it has become almost synonymous with Spanish white wine (and is so much easier for an English speaker to pronounce than Rías Baixas) even if the whites of Rueda have posed a more recent challenge. The combination of the thick skins of Albariño and the Atlantic coast radically behind Rías Baixas, much more disabled than the rest of Spain, gave crisp, dry and fruity wines for early consumption that have been much more refreshing than most Spanish whites.

But now there is a sea change in the style of Albariño de Rías Baixas by which producers of the best wines seem to be heading in a sort of direction of Chablis. They make more interesting wines: saline, mineral wines, with a deep flavor designed to age are all worth looking for. As a sign of the growing severity of wines, the first Vintage 2024 by Vega Sicilia will not be released until 2027. The region was divided into five subzones, which Val is going directly to the eastern and most humid east coast.

A characteristic of Galicia in general is that the vineyards are tiny and often belong to family members who left the region a long time ago, so the purchase of land is charged with difficulty. The 4,640 ha of vines in Rías Baixas, for example, have around 16,000 different owners, many of whom have dispersed worldwide. It took Vega Sicilia four years of negotiation to acquire only 30 ha.

The region is divided into 22,500 plots providing grapes for less than 200 wine producers. Each square thumb of land must win its dungeon. Because granite is so common, many vines are formed in granite posts with other crops planted below. Other Galician wine regions, Ribeiro, Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras have just over 1,000 ha of vines each, while Monterrei on the Portuguese border under 700 ha.

The Miño river crosses Ribeiro, a wine supplier in England in the Middle Ages, before being part of the border between Spain and Portugal. It is much dry than Rías Baixas and its dry, firm whites, often more powerful, made from the same grapes as Vinho Verde from Portugal, are currently enjoying a renaissance that started in the 1970s when Ricardo Carreiro de Coto de Gomariz revived the varieties of local gries, including Treixadura. (The Sherry Graph Palomino was formerly widely planted in Galicia because it was usefully productive, but its wines were not as distinctive as those based on native grapes and it has largely disappeared.)

Monterrei is indeed inside the land with a much more continental climate than the more influenced regions against the Atlantic described above. Although it is mainly a small white producer, it can also ripen red wine grapes, similar to those of Ribeira sacra to the north, one of the most dramatic wine regions of the earth. Red wine wines largely, literally, on the slate slopes of the Sil valley, which can reach 85%gradients. It is a miracle that viticulture really survives here. But the tastes of Dominio de Bibei and Ponte Da Boga show what can be done with local and fruity mencía grapes (which is also the pillar of the exciting Bierzo region near the eastern border of Galice in Castilla y León).

Valdeorras in the extreme southeast The corner of the Galicia, bordered by Bierzo, is also on SIL. He now has a higher quality White-Wine production record, thanks to his supremely distinguished Godello grape, which was saved from the quasi-extension in the 1970s by the founder of the Cave Godeval. It is considered to be the “father of Godello”, although the first wine manufactured exclusively from the grapes was launched as recently as the mid -1980s. The grapes can make these refined wines, with a minerality of citrus and an impressive structure, which they drew the attention of the Spanish winegrowers from other regions.

Telmo Rodriguez, who made good wine throughout Spain, realized for the first time that the east of Galicia was a treasure of old vines in the 1990s. He threw the foundations of his operation Ladeiras Do Xil Galicien in 2000 and now has 25 ha of vines in Valdeorras and Ribeira Sacra, including nine on extremely steep slopes.

Rafael Palacios, younger brother of Álvaro, who had already taken on glory for his wine from Ermita to Priorat in Catalunya, arrived in 2004 and showed that Valdeorras can produce some of the most beautiful dry whites in the world. Its wines specific to the vineyard are really superb and have the same kind of construction as a good Puligny-Montrachet. Its vineyards are as high as 700 m above sea level, and its prices are also high – more than £ 60 for sorting, its first single vine bottle.

Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, none of these talented winegrowers were included in an initiative organized at the end of last year by local officials to show more than 100 Galician wines (and some spirits and liqueurs) in London. In fact, when I overlooked the names of the participants with those whose wines are the favorites of the team Jancisrobinson.com, I found only Fillaboa and Quinta Couselo de Rías Baixas and Coto de Gomariz de Ribeiro among those included. Presumably, the exercise was mainly designed to give less known producers, who funded it, a helping hand.

There were some finds in tasting, some reds. But if you are looking for really refreshing whites with a real character, which can surprise those who have memories of heavy white Spanish wines, I can recommend those listed here.

Tasting notes, scores and dates of drinks suggested on purple pages of Jancisrobinson.com. International resellers on Wine-searcher.com

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