| Just
before this article went to press, at the Encuentro
Verema (verema.com)
wine convention in Valencia,
I met Spanish film producer José Luís
Cuerda, who recently began producing Sanclodio, a delicious, complex, delightful
white made with six grapes: treixadura,
albariño, loureiro,
godello, torrontés and caiño blanco.
Only the fact that Cuerda's
vines are still young and thus exhibit
little of the terroir that
they will undoubtedly show as his viñas,
keeps this superbly balanced wine from being
one of the great white wines of Galicia.
Ribavia
is dotted with charming, old wine-growing villages
hemmed by rustic, trellised small plot vineyards planted
long ago on granite-buttressed terraces. These viñedos are of another age and are among of the most picturesque
in Spain.
While looking for the vineyards of Emilio Rojo
in the hamlet of Arnoia,
it was disconcerting to happen upon a forest fire, thought
to be set by an arsonist, raging southeast of town and
potentially threatening a particularly beautiful spread
of old vines and the quaint stone houses that stood
among them. The scene became totally surreal when helicopters
and fire-fighting planes swooped in, flying back and
forth to the Minho river and a nearby
reservoir to collect water for "bombing runs."
Unfortunately, this was not be the last time I came
upon such a scene during this August trip. (If one tastes
a smoky quality in some 2006 Galician whites, in all
seriousness, it will not be from a toasted barrel.)
Rías
Baixas: To the west
of Ribeiro lies Rías
Baixas, characterized by the
southern Galician Baixas,
or "lower," fjord-like inlets that mark the
Galician coast and from which both the area and the
DO take their names. The albariño
grape reigns supreme in Rías
Baixas, and the luscious,
fruity, but nicely balanced, food-friendly wines produced
from it have propelled Galician whites into both the
national and international spotlight. Indeed, Rías
Baixas whites are some of
the most versatile and least intimidating in the market;
its Albariños typically exhibit
lovely, green-tinged straw or light gold colors and
exude typically fruity albariño
aromas reminiscent of pear, white peach, pineapple or
apricot; racy acid underpinnings shore up the same often
luscious fruit flavors found in the nose and balance
harmoniously with delicious, complex, dry mineral-laced
finishes. This attractive combination of fruitiness
and dryness makes Albariños
ideal as apéritif wines and
equally suitable mates for a range of modern dishes,
as well as for Galicia's legendary seafood classics. Because of their inherent versatility,
Albariños have become so popular
with American consumers that the United
States is now its most
important export market (the only Spanish wine
region that can claim that distinction).
Five designated winegrowing areas make up the Rías
Baixas DO: Condado
de Tea, O Rosal, Val do Salnés,
Soutomaior and the relatively
new Ribeira do Ulla.
In each of these subzones,
a wine must be 100 percent albariño
to use the Albariño monovarietal
designation on the label. This is often a moot point,
since 95 percent of Rías Baixas's more than 7,500 acres
of registered DO vineyards are planted to albariño.
Yet there are some very high-quality, noteworthy whites
that cannot be labeled as Albariño,
but can be designated Rías Baixas as long as they contain
at least 70 percent albariño.
In Condado de Tea and O
Rosal some very interesting,
sometimes very high-quality versions of these wines
are made (by long-standing tradition) with up to 30
percent of the DO's other
preferred varieties - treixadura,
loureira and caiño
blanco (some godello,
torrontés and marqués
are also authorized). Small additions of these varieties
to the albariño deepens aromas, adds body and, often these
blends show more complexity than many 100% albariño
wines.
With more than 60 percent of its vineyards registered,
Val do Salnés, surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic
and the inlets Ría
de Arousa and Ría
de Pontevedra,
is the most important Rías
Baixas subregion, followed by Condado de
Tea and O Rosal, both in southernmost
Galicia along the Minho. Several major producers in Condado de Tea, along with their 100 percent Albariño wines, also make intriguing albariño-treixadura-albariño
blends; most prominent are Marqués
de Vizhoja's Señor
de Folla Verde, Adegas
Galegas's Veigadares
and Valmiñor's Dávila.
Farther west, in the O Rosal
subregion at the mouth of
the Minho,
Terras
Gauda, Santiago
Ruíz and Pazo de San Mauro are all
marked by loureiro
in the blend, along with smaller percentages of treixadura
and caiño blanco that promote
an attractive complexity and demonstrate the significant
potential of these lesser-known grapes when blended
with albariño.
In the literal rather than figurative sense, Rías
Baixas wines are likely the most feminine in Spain. Many of
the country's wine regions have female winemakers and
winery owners, but not in the numbers working in Rías
Baixas, where the president
of the Consejo
Regulador is the
dynamic María
Soledad Bueno, owner
of Pazo
de Señorans. Among
the female enologists responsible for some of the region's
top wines are María
Luisa Freire (Santiago
Ruíz), Pilar
Jiménez (Pazo
de Barrantes), Cristina
Mantilla (Veigadares,
Pazo de San Mauro, Valminor
Dávila and Couto),
Ana Martín
(Condes de Albarei),
Angela Martín
(Casal Caiero), Ana Oliveira (Terras
Guada), María
del Ana Quintela
(Pazo de Señorans)
and Isabel Salgado (La Granja Fillaboa).
 Many
of these producers were showing their wines at the colorful
annual Festa do Albariño
held every August in Cambados,
the main town of the Val de Salnés
district. As the first American invited to help judge
this Albariño competition
at this event, I was privileged to sample more than
70 wines over the course of the competition, the public
tastings, official meals and
impromptu gastronomic excursions around Cambabos.
Many superb, small-producer, 100 percent Albariño
were among my favorites: Cabaliero
do Val, Dona Rosa (which finished second in
the Albariño judging), Manuel
Ilustre's Dos Eidos, Gerardo Méndez's
Do Ferreiro
(one of the region's best producers), Granja
Fillaboa, Lusco,
Palacio de Fefiñanes,
Pazo de Barrantes and
Pazo de Señorans
(fortunately, most are currently exported to the United
States). Judging, tasting and drinking these wines,
often with those supernal shellfish of Galicia - ostras (oysters),
almejas (clams), cigalas
(langoustines), nécoras (small
crabs), vieiras (sea scallops) and zamburiñas
(similar to bay scallops, served with their coral) -
underscored the excellence of Spain's
best-known white varietal
wine.
The range of my dining experiences
while in Cambados, which spanned modern Spanish cuisine and regional
specialities, underscored
the versatility of Albariño, and tastings of several
wines, particularly those of Pazo
de Señorans and Palacio
de Fefiñanes, reinforced
my faith in the age-worthiness of this native white
in the hands of the best producers. Yet several
barrel-fermented Rías Baixas
whites sampled on this trip reconfirmed my belief (formed
on earlier visits) that fermenting such wines in new
oak fails to enhance their natural flavors and often
masks their freshness, fruitiness, charm, nuances and
any terroir they may possess.
In this new oak-demented age, mercifully, the majority
of Rías Baixas whites are spared brutal
lashings of oak that many other Spanish wines suffer.
Three of the very best, Pazo
de Señorans (unoaked), Do Ferreiro and Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas (old vines) and Palacio de
Fefiñanes (used barrels),
see no new oak, yet age well, particularly the latter.
Pazo de Señorans Selección de Añadas Albariño, a stellar wine
made only in the best Rías
Baixas vintages, is aged on
the lees in stainless steel for three years. Fruity
and complex, it is one of Rías
Baixas's greatest wines and
one of the best Spanish whites I have ever encountered.
Founded in 1904 and housed in a baronial palace on a
charming plaza in Cambados, Palacio de Fefiñanes makes albariños aged in
large, used oak vats (a la Alsace), which have minimal
impact on the flavor, but contribute greatly to the
age-worthiness of the wines, which I have beem tracking since the 1994 vintage). Fefiñanes,
owned and produced by Juan Gil de Araujo
(not to be confused with the Juan Gil of Jumilla),
is on par with some of the finest Chablis.
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