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.
Faced with excess production and no solution in sight, Ribeira Sacra needs to take steps to compete on a global scale and appeal to the modern consumer.
Here’s a rundown of some Galician wine news from the month of January, translated from the original Spanish (or Galician) for your convenience.
To kick off the year, I’m handing the keyboard over to my friend Miguel Crunia, a born and bred Galician and sommelier at Edinburgh-based online wine shop and importer FÌON. With no disrespect to the Douro (or Rust), Ribeiro has every right to be recognized as one of Europe’s oldest designated wine regions.
Here’s a rundown of some Galician wine news from the month of October, translated from the original Spanish (or Galician) for your convenience.
I’m late to my interview with Luis Anxo.
I’ve been filming a video about the medieval terraces of Val do Avia with my friend Antonio Míguez Amil, and between having to take it easy on the gas pedal while driving up the serpentine roads that lead to Antonio’s vineyard, shooting the video, and catching up (I haven’t seen him for a year), we’re running late.
So I call him. “No problem! I’m at the optometrist!” he booms in rapid-fire Galician. “Come by when you’re done and we’ll go to the winery!”
Antonio Míguez Amil probably knows more about Ribeiro than any person alive today. I call him the “wise man of Ribeiro” for his encyclopedic knowledge of the region’s history, terroir, and his dedication to recovering traditional vineyards and planting them with native grapes. He took me to one of the vineyards that he’s painstakingly recovering in San Lourenzo da Pena to talk about the history of Ribeiro and why these old vineyards are worth saving.
Here’s a rundown of some Galician wine news from the month of September, translated from the original Spanish (or Galician) for your convenience.
Natalia Rodriguez left her job as a lawyer to return to the countryside and try to make organic albariño. Twelve years later, she’s the first certified organic albariño producer in Rías Baixas. We sat down to talk about organic farming, the Condado do Tea, and what makes albariño special.
Albariño Day is an all-you-can-eat-and-drink-without-bursting marathon, complete with concerts, fireworks, and maybe the occasional full-frontal nudity. It’s one of the reasons why Albariño from Rías Baixas is world-famous today, but most people don’t know its origin story…