Most people outside Spain couldn’t tell you what Ribeiro is—let alone rattle off producers’ names. The people who do know a bit more about Ribeiro can probably name about two winemakers, but can’t tell you much more than that.
Within Spain, though, it’s a different story. For many Spaniards—including Galicians—Ribeiro is synonymous with Viña Costeira. It’s Ribeiro’s largest winery by far, with around 3.5 million liters bottled each year between the winery in Ribeiro and their satellite winery in Valdeorras, which produces mostly mencía. Around half of that wine gets sold in Galicia, and the rest goes to consumers in Spain or gets exported to some 40 countries. Here in the US, you can find the occasional bottle of their flagship wine, a blend of mainly treixadura, albariño, and torrontés. But it wasn’t always “treixadura-plus.”
Out of all Ribeiro’s native white grapes, treixadura reigns supreme. It’s responsible for the rise and fall (and rise again) of one of Spain’s oldest wine regions, and quite possibly the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. It’s both a solo superstar and a team player, that shines on its own and in carries the team in blends. And it owes part of its comeback to Viña Costeira.
In the late 80s and 90s, when pioneers like Emilio Rojo and Luis Anxo Rodríguez were showing the potential of native grapes, it would have been easy to brush them off and continue making wines to uphold the status quo, using the palomino and alicante bouschet that first replaced grapes like treixadura after phylloxera. Luckily, the cooperative took on the challenge of investigating native grapes and gradually adding more and more of them to their wine—even paying growers to plant treixadura instead of palomino.
We could also argue that without the cooperative, the modern Denominación de Orixe Ribeiro wouldn’t exist. When it was founded in 1968, more than 1,500 growers were involved. Nowadays, the co-op has around 450 members and buys grapes from over 200 other growers. All told, between the vineyards farmed by its members and its growers Viña Costeira includes nearly one fourth of D.O. Ribeiro’s territory. All paid a decent price for their grapes, backed up by insurance in case of a harvest disaster.
To learn a bit more about Viña Costeira, treixadura, and why Ribeiro deserves a seat at the table with the great wines of the world, I talked to Manuel Castro González, the cooperative’s winemaker and a proud proponent of treixadura’s place in the world of wine
(Interview edited for length and clarity, full conversation on YouTube)
Who are you, what you do, and how did you get here?
My name is Manuel Castro González, I’m the winemaker for Viña Costeira, and I’m an agricultural engineer with a degree in food technology. Why am I in the world of wine? I really came into the world of wine through an acquaintance, through a friend. We studied together and I started working as a wine technical consult in the mid-90s. We went around during and after the harvest with a rental car and a small portable laboratory to do the analyses and direct the winemaking a bit, and that’s how I got into the world of wine.
Then I was hired by a large company that had two wineries in Galicia in Rías Baixas and Ribeiro, I was responsible for winemaking in both regions. And I was there about two and a half years more or less. And then Viña Costeira hired me in mid-2002. And I’ve been at this winery for 20 years. At the time I arrived there was just the one Viña Costeira winery in Ribadavia, and now we have two more wineries: a winery in Valdeorras, which is our most recent project, and Pazo de Toubes, an old winery from 1742 which we’ve recovered and is a bit of a boutique project.
So tell us a little about Viña Costeira then, because there are probably people watching this who don’t know Viña Costeira or your wines.
Probably… I mean, in Galicia we’re well-known because we’re a a big company—for Galicia—if you look at Spain as a whole or the rest of the world, we’re medium-sized, even small, but in Galicia we do have a lot of market share. The winery was born in the mid-60s out of a need to bring together winegrowers and make wine in a professional facility. The cooperative started in 1968 in an assembly celebrated in the Río Cinema And in that assembly they also decided to merge with another cooperative that already existed in Ribeiro, called the San Pedro de Leiro cooperative, which dated back to 1952.
And that’s also remarkable, isn’t it? Because I understand that in Galicia there have been very few cooperatives, compared to the rest of Spain.
Yes, in Ribeiro there was San Pedro de Leiro, and when the one in Ribadavia was founded, they merged into a single cooperative, which until very recently was the only one! In Valdeorras there were three, of which only one is still operating. In Rías Baixas, it started with one, two, now there are some more… it’s a business model—I personally like it a lot. Working for growers, understanding that the owners of the company are the growers, and that those who work with the grapes and in the vineyard later benefit from the earnings of the company… You establish a very beautiful personal relationship with the growers, I mean you go through Ribadavia or you go to other places and they say hello to you, they know who you are, they’re proud of their wine… I personally think the cooperative model works very well and in Galicia we are cooperatives associated with brands, which is also a curious thing because in the rest of Spain that doesn’t always happen. Here you think of Martín Códax, Paco & Lola, Condes de Albarei, and you think of Viña Costeira. They’re cooperatives that have worked a lot on bottled wine, and that have worked on the brand, and that’s something that didn’t happen very often in other areas.
It’s funny that you say “bottled” wine because it didn’t start out like that, right?
No, of course, in the beginning, the market was dominated by bulk wines. The wines were sold in barrels and consumed mainly in restaurants in the big cities: Ourense, Vigo, Santiago, A Coruña… they even traveled further. Most of the wine was sold in bulk, was unbranded, and had no label. But our founder Eulogio Gómez Franqueira, who was also the founder of the company COREN, another large agricultural co-op here in Ourense, knew that he wanted to put a branded wine on the market, a wine with a name, and he always knew that he wanted the majority of the wine to be bottled. So what happened? The first one was Pazo, Pazo Ribeiro—which is still the well-known brand and that in some parts of Spain is almost like synonymous with Ribeiro, so in the Basque Country or in Catalonia when people think of Ribeiro they automatically think of Pazo Ribeiro. Of course, we’re talking about years, over 50 years on the market and for many people it’s a standard. But what happened? Only a small amount got bottled.
In the mid 70’s something happened that would set the future course of the winery, which was a project to recover native grape varieties of Ribeiro that at that time were the minority to the point that they didn’t even make up 1%. So, the vast majority of grapes planted in Ribeiro in the 60’s and 70’s were grapes that had been replanted at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century after phylloxera. The nursery workers already brought the plant grafted with their variety, palomino for white grapes, and for reds they brought alicante bouschet, what’s known as garnacha tintorera. There were some few romantics—it seems to me—who kept vines of traditional varieties, and thanks to them in the 1970s, in the mid-1970s, a joint project with the Caja Rural de Galicia in collaboration with the recently-created Oenological Station and in collaboration with Viña Costeira they started a project to recover Ribeiro’s traditional varieties.
And thanks to that, a lot of our growers had plants to experiment with. It was a time of experimentation and a time to sow the seed that later sprouted in the 80’s and that really began to work, because you could see that a change in wine consumption was coming. You knew we were going to have times where people were going
to consume less wine but of better quality and above all with more personality.
So when you arrived at Viña Costeira 20 years ago, could you give us an idea in figures of the kilos you received of palomino, alicante bouschet, and how much treixadura, and now how has that changed?
The turning point came in 2011: I arrived at the end of 2002 and the harvest was already done, so my first vintage here was 2003. I can give you percentages: in 2003 we could say there was maybe 66% palomino / alicante and 33% from native grapes, which would later be 60-40, 55-45 and the cut-off point occurs in the year 2010-2011. As of 2011, there were more native varieties: above all treixadura with the rest of the varieties—like torrentés, godello, albariño, loureira, caíño and others… Today in 2022, the latest harvest, we can be talking about two thirds, that is, 66% native grapes compared to a third of palomino and decreasing.
If this was already coming at the end of the 70’s and the beginning of the 80’s, after 40 years nobody, nobody today doubts that the future of the area is through the native varieties.
But this doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to go and completely tear out what was palomino, no. There’s still a market for basic wine, simple wine for the menu del día, for the person who wants light wines, wines with 10.5% or 11% alcohol, simple wines… That consumer exists, so why don’t we serve them?
Let’s talk about varieties. Tell us a little about treixadura, because it seems to me that very few people have had the opportunity to try either a single-varietal treixadura or a treixadura in a blend, as is usual in Ribeiro.
Treixadura is the queen of Ribeiro without any doubt, it’s the best-adapted variety to our climate and our soil. treixadura is the best variety, but godello also grows well, as does albariño, and loureira. In terms of aromatic qualities, treixadura has a very wide range of fruit aromas depending on the clone, depending on the area where it’s planted or the soil that comes from. You have from the purest white fruit: apple, pear, quince, to notes of stone fruit, which for me are always very clear and that I identify with the yellow plum, called the “Claudia” plum in Galicia, and sometimes apricot and peach.
Sometimes a floral-type profile appears, which is also very very delicate, very rich, reminds a bit of white flowers or rose petals, and sometimes citrus peel comes out. I get orange peel, lemon peel… This also depends a bit on ripeness. It doesn’t happen every year, but in slightly cooler harvests, more citrus skin comes out.
So it’s 80% fruit aromas and we could say that it could have 15% floral and 5% herbaceous. Also sometimes fresh grass appears in less ripe treixaduras or in years with a less potential alcoholic strength.
If we compare treixadura with another grape so that people have context for example?
It’s complicated, but sometimes I find myself trying wines from viognier that remind me of treixadura, aromatically speaking. Or chenin blanc, because it has white fruit, it has those herbal notes, it has some aspects of citrus… Possibly in the nose of treixadura I could see a mix between chenin and viognier, something similar. When treixadura is young, it’s clearly fruity and floral, but as the years go by, those honeys begin to emerge, those quinces that are very reminiscent of chenin from the Loire right? Here we also work a lot with lees aging, which is also done a lot in the Loire, then those bakery notes can appear, creamy notes… Maybe the difference is that on the palate, treixadura no longer resembles chenin at all this because it has much more moderate acidity than chenin. Chenin is usually a little fresher and sharper and treixadura makes wines with medium acidity, and even medium-minus if we go with the WSET 3 tasting style. Because in years of great ripeness. acidity is around 5 grams per liter…
Treixadura is the typical grape that’s very good on its own, because it is soft, silky, easy to drink, elegant… but if you add a small percentage of albariño or godello, or loureira, you give it a rush of acidity and a rush of joy, what I call “rock and roll.”
Treixadura is like very soft, classical music, a ballad, and suddenly you enter with a percentage of 10, 15% albariño, or a little less of godello, and something from loureira, and suddenly it changes. Aromatically, it gets these citrus and floral notes typical of albariño or herbal notes from loureira, and then the weight on the palate changes. Suddenly, 0.4 or 0.5 more grams per liter of acidity appear, which makes it much more lively, more electric, and well, logically that was something that the old growers knew, and that’s why it’s normal to find treixadura in blends.
Yeah, that’s something that I also want to highlight because historically speaking, wines from Ribeiro have always been blends.
Always, I mean, the wines from here were always field blends: they came right out of the vineyard mixed. Because there were vineyards that had a few rows of treixadura, a few of godello, some of torrontés, others of albariño… So the normal thing was that everything came together and that it was vinified. Nowadays, the vineyards are by varietal, and they’re harvested separately and the blend is made later. But what’s normal here is the blend.
I compare it to painting a picture. Paint a picture with a single color, or paint a picture with a color palette. If you’re Picasso and you are very, very good, with blue you do wonders. But hey, since I don’t consider myself a Picasso by any means, if you give me various colors: treixadura, albariño, godello, loureira… that stuff. A little bit of caiño, a little torrentés, that will give everything much more complexity, it will give many nuances, it’ll give a wider range, and the flavor and aroma of the wine will benefit. So the push for the variety is good commercially, because I understand that in an international market the customer asks for wine using the variety. But we in Ribeiro are more interested in defending the territory: the name of Ribeiro, and saying “hey, this is treixadura with a little bit of other varieties,” and I think that is the way.
What does Ribeiro have that makes it special?
Let’s see, it’s clear that Ribeiro has some optimum climatic and soil conditions when we’ve been growing vines for thousands of years. I think it’s one of the things that makes Ribeiro singular, that is to say, this intermediate point between the Atlantic climate and the continental climate that gives this transition places us in a very good situation to achieve slow and gradual ripening. You can’t always have this: there are places that are a lot warmer where ripening is guaranteed, but it’s too strong and too fast. Here you get the soft, slow maturation to maintain acidity, maintain that freshness, maintain aroma… So climatically we are extremely lucky to have the Atlantic influence, moderated in a certain way by the mountains that separate us from the coast. So that’s a point in our favor.
Another point in favor is the soil: it’s a granite-based soil, most of the soils are acidic, ideal for making white wines, although there are also areas with a bit of of clay and areas of schists and slates and so we have a few varieties of soil. So it’s like we have many elements and many factors to combine and play and give a unique blend that you can’t get anywhere else in the world. I’m seeing how in recent years, projects have been coming here to establish themselves in Ribeiro. I’m talking about Matarromera, I’m talking about Pago de Carraovejas, I’m talking about Matías Michelini, I’m talking about other wineries that are looking at the possibility of buying a winery and buying vineyards in Ribeiro…
Why do they come? If they wanted to make a white wine, simply make a white wine, they would have it easier where they’re from. Planting their vineyards there with their varieties and making a white wine… it’s infinitely more comfortable than coming here to fight against the smallholdings, to look for parcels, group them, to buy wineries… if they come they’re overexerting themselves. And why do they make that extra effort? Because they have a prize: this terroir.
In other words, you can’t find this territory with its unique characteristics anywhere else. So I think that this is something that we have to value. I taste wines from all over the world and when I attend international fairs I find great white wines, extraordinary whites, in the Loire Valley or in Burgundy, I find them in the Rhine or I find them in other parts of the New World and I see great qualities in those wines but I don’t give myself a complex, I don’t say “Oh, these wines are so good and I can’t get there.” No no, our wines can perfectly compare to these others. Obviously with their own personality, with its differential elements from the native varieties, there’s no other place in the world, and that climate and that soil. So I think that it’s something that is worth trying. For the people who are watching this, I would encourage them to put us to the test, that they give us the opportunity to get to know us, that if they find a bottle of Ribeiro or a bottle of treixadura that they try us, because in general people who try these wines walk away really happy and satisfied.