In 2022, the first Galician wine to get 100 points from Wine Advocate wasn’t an Albariño, but a Godello. Specifically a single-vineyard Godello, ‘Sorte O Soro’ from Rafael Palacios. Lest you think my standard for judging a wine’s quality is tied up in scores, let’s point out that beside being the darling of many a wine critic, godello is riding a wave of good fortune right now, even being touted as “the new Albariño” in Spain.
Though the variety isn’t necessarily native to Valdeorras—it’s planted along the Sil River in Bierzo as well and no one knows for sure where it comes from, despite what DO Valdeorras’ “GODELLO IS FROM VALDEORRAS” t-shirts, billboards, tote bags… might tell you—the grape has seen a near-constant rise in popularity over the past decades. The area planted to godello in Valdeorras has doubled just in the past ten years (from 306 hectares in 2012 to 616 hectares in 2022), replacing vineyards previously planted to palomino and red grapes.
Godello’s potential to make great wines in Valdeorras has gotten attention from superstar Riojano winemakers Rafael Palacios and Telmo Rodriguez, who make some of the most sought-after wines coming out of the region. Wine importer Jorge Ordoñez’s “Avancia” has been a prime example of Valdeorras Godello for American consumers since 2007, and winery groups like CVNE and Pago de los Capellanes also have projects in Valdeorras. It’s clear that the attraction of all these major players lies in the way Valdeorras’ terroir expresses in its number-one grape.
But despite godello’s meteoric rise, just fifty years ago the grape was on the edge of extinction. 2024 marks 50 years of the ReViVal plan—50 years since the beginning of godello’s rise to fame. Its modern success is a testament to a wine region that managed not only to recover it, but to also turn it into one of the most appreciated white wines in Spain.
So how did godello’s revival come about? Let’s start at the beginning…
No one knows where exactly godello comes from, but since pre-phylloxeric vines exist, we know that it’s been in Valdeorras since at least the 19th century. There were probably many more vines, but in 1882, disaster struck when phylloxera invaded the region and destroyed over a thousand hectares in just a few years. José Núñez Núñez, a local doctor and wine grower, traveled to Logroño to learn how to graft vines and select varieties according to soil types. While there, he also learned that the best way to stop the plague was by uprooting the infected vines and burning all the contaminated organic material, replanting vines using American rootstock. With this knowledge, he returned to Valdeorras and opened the first American vine nurseries in Galicia. After years of work, Valdeorras’ vineyards regained their scope, but not their former glory. The story was the same as in the rest of Galicia, and traditional varieties like godello and brancellao found themselves mostly replaced by mencía, garnacha tintorera, and palomino.
The arrival of the railroad in 1883 meant that Valdeorras’ wines could now travel to the rest of Galicia. Oceans of bulk wine departed for A Coruña, Santiago, Lugo and Ourense, where they were eagerly drunk in taverns and restaurants. Palomino and garnacha tintorera were valued for their easy drinking and deep color, and they continued as majority grapes for most of the 20th century. This echoed the rest of Galicia, as locals tried to eke out a living selling wine and focused on quantity over quality. In 1945, the Denominación de Origin Valdeorras was born, making it Galicia’s second official wine appellation. The Ministry of Agriculture’s decree protected the Valdeorras name and established its approved white grapes as “jerez” (palomino) and godello, and its red grapes as garnacha tintorera, alicante, mencía and gran negro.
Although godello was an authorized grape, its renaissance didn’t come about until the 1970s. When Horacio Fernández Presa arrived as the head of the Agricultural Extension program in the early ‘70s, the vast majority of Valdeorras wine was still shipped off in bulk, the population was aging, farming wasn’t very profitable, and the alternative of jobs in the slate mines was tempting a lot of people away from agriculture.
It was time to take a step towards quality. The Agricultural Extension team started a project that had its mission statement in its name: ReViVal: Restructuring the Vineyards of Valdeorras.
Beginning in 1974, Agricultural Extension workers conducted a survey of the growers themselves in order to better understand what varieties could work best in future Valdeorras vineyards. The winner, by far, was godello. Between 1975 and 1976, Agricultural Extension workers set about planting new godello vines, and finally collected a tiny first harvest of 4,000 kilos. Over the next decades, they took on the immense work of completely replacing the old vines of palomino and garnacha tintorera with mostly mencía and godello. Now, in the 21st century, Valdeorras is known for producing some of the most exciting single-variety Godello wines in Galicia.