A Visit to Galicia Part 2

Tuesday - 3^rd Visit

9am: Bodegas Carballal, DO Valdeorras

A small, modern winery in Valdeorras, making a great range of fresh, modern styles of wines, more commercial but I reckon should be fantastic for the Summer:

2011 Sileno Blanco

Palomino/Godello 11.5%

Fresh, clean, light and fruity, nice character. 

2011 Erebro

100% Godello

Very good, with lovely depth, touch of spice, really nicely put together with real sense of complexity. 

2011 Sileno Red

Mencia/Garnarcha

Lovely crunch blackberry /cherry and blueberry notes.  Spicey, fresh fruited, lifted and delightfully honest. 

2011 Erebro

100% Mencia

Good deep fruit, intense, ripe, fresh, lovely lively fruit.  Good dark fruit with herbaceous notes of undergrowth finishing with a touch of bitter chocolate.  Excellent 

A worthwhile visit and I hope to get some of this in for the Summer.

Visit 4

Do Campo Gacio Valdeorras:

We eventually found this tiny wine estate tucked away in the Galician hills.  Walking up the very old hamlet, greeted by the barking of dogs and under the suspicious glares of old men in work overalls, we finally came upon the charming Manuel and Remedios.

Manuel is a practising dentist and has been producing wines in his wife’s old grandfather’s winery for the past few years, making organic Mencia, Tempranillo and Godello - this was my revelation of the trip!

This is a real cottage industry, without even a website to look at and producing about 6000 bottles a year.  Made in a meticulously clean cellar, the wines are a sensation!

The vineyards are located on the hillside, at an altitude of 650 to 700 meters, with a northeast-southwest orientation. The climate is transitional between continental and oceanic, temperatures are extreme with snow in the winter and yet in the Summer it can rise to over 40c!

2012 Godello 12.5%ish

Rich, spicey, apple, hawthorne, lovely, rich and lively.

Very good balance on the palate, pretty, pithy, floral notes, with a wonderful freshness and intensity.  Slight nutty/savoury notes on the finish, opening up with more salty, savoury, complex notes – utterly sublime! 

2012 Mencia 80%/Tempranillo 20%

The nose just hits you, awesome dark briary fruit, really rich and complex yet fresh and luscious.  That touch of savoury nuttiness on the palate too, this stunning mid-bodied style of wine is simply sublime too.  Perfect! 

Visit 5

Bodega Forjas del Salnés

Rias Baixas

Overnight stay at the lovely Gran Talaso Hotel in Sanxenxo http://www.hotelsanxenxo.com/

Rodrigo is one of Spain’s new wave winemakers who look at the wealth of their history for the inspiration for the future.  Passionate about old vines and old varieties, Rodri vinifies about 25 different cuvees, some single vineyard, some multi vineyard, some in 2 year old oak, some in concrete but all with one key goal in mind – terroir!

We visited the new winery first and tasted the very impressive range of 2012 wines from cask.

Rodrigo is perhaps best known in Spanish wine circles for his stellar reds produced from the indigenous Galician varietals Caiño, Espadeiro and Loureiro, however his whites are also outstanding. They are fermented with natural yeasts and then matured on lees for months to give complex, full-bodied wines with a fresh acid backbone and a briny tang on the finish

2011 Leirana Albariño

Made from a selection of vineyard sites, this albarino displays a terrific nose of pear, stonefruit and a delicious fruit and acidity on the palate.  This wine is far greater than the sum of its parts and set to become an icon of the region. A wine with real depth and interest.

2009 Albarino En Barrica

The Barrica used here are old, so there is no new oak effect on the wine, here the barrels give the wine an extra degree of richness, roundness and more weight.  Grown on granite sand covered with a layer of humus over granite bedrock; very poor fast draining soil that vines struggle in and phylloxera cannot live in, just perfect! Many of the vineyards are deceptively old with some vines up to 200 years old. The grapes are hand picked so that only the ripest most succulent fruit is used for Rodrigo`s wine which is matured in old oak barriques. Ripe stone fruits with a hint of cut grass and sandlewood on the nose with stone fruits and antique oak with well balanced acidity on the palate.

A Visit to Galicia Part 1

Go Go Galicia

Landing in the Atlantic mists surrounding the modern airport of Santiago Compostella, myself and my fellow Galician adventurers (Ben from Carte Blanche Wines, Tamsin from Wadebridge Wines and Tamlyn from Jancis Robinson.com) rocked off for three days packed full of dramatic, twisting roads, beautiful scenery, delicious indigenous wines and lashings of porky and fishy goodness!

Galicia is Spain’s beautiful and North Eastern region that enjoys a decidedly Atlantic perspective.  With the highest level of rain in the country, Galicia is a beautiful, green region, marked by hilly, to almost mountainous terrain.

Famous for its seafood and of course pork, the dishes of the region have a charming rusticity, focussing on simple foods where the quality of the ingredients shown through.

Dominio do Bibei, Ribeira Sacra

http://www.dominiodobibei.com/web/index.html

A stunning mixture of modern and ancient, this is a truly New Wave winery that is making some utterly unique and exquisite wines.

This is one incredibly bold and inspiring project.  With the aim of reclaiming and rebuilding the mostly abandoned, ancient terraces around the winery, to get Dominio de Bibei to the position where it can realise its potential, has taken monumental effort and also a small fortune!

The first part of our visit was to orientate ourselves with the various vineyards.  This involved some pretty extreme off-road action, and the usages of some serious gearing on one of the UK’s undoubtedly finest exports, the mighty Landover.

Although we did see one which hadn’t actually managed to judge the angle of a descent well enough…..fortunately, we only drove part that at the end of the visit!

After a fascinating, tour, with the weather outside being decidedly Galician (not known as Green Spain for nothing!) and chilly too, we dived inside the winery for lunch for a delicious warm cod, lentil and chick pea soup, great breads and of course some mighty fine pork product, in this case, classic air dried jamon and some of the best chorizo I have tasted.

So, replenished, recharged and rewarmed we headed off towards the separate white and red cuveries to taste first from barrel the current vintages followed  by heading down towards the Cathedral like tasting room.

These guys only focus on the unique character of the local and indigenous varieties that include Mencia, Garnacha, Brancellao and Mouraton for the reds and Godello, Albariño, Treixadura and Doña Blanca for the whites.

Some a re vinified in oak, some in concrete, some even in the very on-trend “eggs” (Sorry I forgot to get a picture!)

We tasted extensively from all their cuvees in the winery but as these are not finished wines I have only included the finished wines we tasted:

2009 Lalama Red 12.5%

Made from a blend of 80% Mencia, the rest a balance of Grenache and Mouroton.

“Rich, opulent with a lovely ripeness, fresh, slightly tight and beautifully focussed.  Ripe, fresh dark raspberry fruit, finishes long and fine”  Drink now – 2018 

2010 Lalama Red 12.5%

“Thrilling, with more definition and freshness than the 2009.  Beautiful, elegant and pure – this is for fans of Fine Burgundy!”  Drink now – 2020 

2003 Lalama Red 12.5%

The first vintage, made from a blend of Garnacha and Mouroton.  Considering this was their first vintage I was mightily impressed.

“Elegant, fine, long and pure with light notes of coffee, mocha, truffle and leather showing light signs of ageing.  Finishing long and fine”  Drink now – 2015 

2010 Lapolo White 13%

17% Albarino, 60% Godello, 17% Dona Blanco, Treixadura

An excellent complex white with a delicious grainy purity with notes of melon and pear.  A lovely length and texture.  Drink now – 2015 

2^nd Stop

Casar de Burbia, Bierzo, nr Ponferrada.

http://www.casardeburbia.com/en/casar-de-burbia

Buying grapes in the higher regions of Bierzo, is another fairly recent project, starting in the late 1990’s.

The main varietals of Bierzo are Mencia for red and Godello for white and we tasted 2 Godellos and 7 Mencia’s of various levels of quality.

The hospitality was incredibly kind and the wines were rich and weighty but I am not sure they’ll feature on our shelves yet.

Overnight Stay at The Aroi Hotel in Ponferrada

http://www.aroihoteles.com/hoteles-ponferrada-bierzo/hotel-ponferrada/hotel-aroi-bierzo-plaza

A really good hotel and great value to boot – no doubt helped by it being a Monday night in the 2^nd week of January.  Downstairs they had a decent bar, so following a quick beer, we left for a wine bar around the corner…..more godello…….and back to the Hotel’s classic, earthenware, old school tapas bar, with - you guessed it - about 5 different types of pork, 2 cured and 3 cooked, the best tasting of the two cooked were some wonderfully rich sausage stew, one made from chorizo and one from black pudding, and whilst visually challenged, they were might delicious!