Xurxo Alba quickly established himself as a rising star in Rías Baixas, working out of his family’s furancho-turned-winery Bodegas Almabar. Today, it’s safe to say that he stands among the region’s great growers and winemakers. From the home base in Rías Baixas, he’s gone on to create projects in Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras.
He’s a master of his craft—his Albariños are effusive, electric wines, brimming with Atlantic energy and Salnés terruño.
Working from a philosophy of “maximum respect,” the wines slip in and out of the natural continuum. Strict natural wine dogmatists would fault him for his use of sulfur treatments in the vines; others would say it’s an inevitable fact of life in rainy, mildew-prone Rías Baixas. We spoke a bit about his necessarily pragmatic approach to winemaking, even while he turns against the tide of conventional growing and winemaking in Rías Baixas.
How does Xurxo balance between his desire to not spray and his need for an income? “With a lot of work, with patience, and above all in the new vineyard, which has been our pilot plantation since 2014, we know that we’re going to lose part of our harvest,” he tells me. “The goal is to lose as little as possible. And if that’s viable, then that will be the future And if not, we’ll take a step back and go the conventional route with the utmost respect, which is what we’ve been doing in the other vineyards.”
Xurxo wants to be “as respectful as possible,” but also find balance—”because no matter how natural you are, if you’re crushing the vine with copper sulfate, I don’t think that’s the most natural either. What is natural? I don’t consider myself more natural for how I work with sulfur. Because at the end of the day, you know, what’s better? To take an antibiotic or take 40 Tylenol?”
As far as the other projects go, it’s obvious that Xurxo is head over heels in love with Galicia. When I ask him to name his favorite part of Rías Baixas, he can’t stop rattling off all the places he loves. Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras, he tells me, give him an opportunity to make other—still very Galician—styles of wines.
In Ribeira Sacra, his “Fusco” cuvée is made from mencía grown on a 1.5ha plot in the Chantada subzone—the most Atlantic of Ribeira Sacra’s subzones.
“I believe that Ribeira Sacra is a magic place for red wines, and I think they’re reds that are from a warmer area but still super fresh. Together with Ribeiro, for me it’s probably the best place for red wine in Galicia,” he tells me.
In Valdeorras, “Ceibo” is made from Godello grown in a friend’s vineyard which spends some time in French oak before bottling. Xurxo explains that he went to Valdeorras because “there are, for me, two varieties in Galicia that are the queens: Albariño and Godello. They’re two super beautiful contrasts, because Albariño is a variety with tension, energy, youth, electricity… And Godello is the complete opposite. It’s an elegant, subtle, very opulent variety. Two very cool contrasts, so that’s why we went to Valdeorras. Because I consider Godello to be a super interesting variety, with a lot of complexity, it catches my attention, and that’s why we wanted to make a Godello. And for me, and from our point of view, the best area is Valdeorras.
I asked Xurxo how he sees the future of Rías Baixas. Like any good Galician, he answers me with a question.
“Rías Baixas the region or Rías Baixas the DO?”
It’s a good question. DO Rías Baixas has been on the receiving end of not a few complaints that it’s stuck in the 1990s, with priorities set on producing volume wines of the “cheap and cheerful” sort that you might find in a Total Wine or Tesco. Despite the criticism, most producers—including Xurxo—have chosen to stay in the DO and fight to promote wines that speak of terruño and fetch higher prices on the market.
Xurxo is optimistic about the future.
“I’d like the DO to be more open,” he says. “I’d like there to be more tolerance, for it to open up a bit to new styles of winemaking, to new wines and that kind of thing. I think there’s a base there, I think there’s a future, I think there is quality, despite there being ups and downs, I believe that… it will become more consistent, and…that everything that’s going to happen is going to be positive.”
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