Is Galicia For Sale?
Pazo de Rubianes, a historic estate and winery in Rías Baixas, is the latest in a growing list of Galician wineries no longer owned by Galicians.
The estate has been sold to Bodegas Arzuaga, a winery from Ribera del Duero which joins the ever-growing club of Spanish wineries desperate to diversify their portfolios by jumping on the white wine trend and snapping up property in Galicia. The first major player to invest in Rías Baixas was Rioja Alta, but over the years, other groups including Freixenet, Masaveu, González Byass, and CVNE have all staked their claim, and each year seems to bring news of another acquisition. La Voz de Galicia reports that around 30 wineries in Rías Baixas alone now have outside capital.
Rías Baixas isn’t the only area to attract outside investment. Matarromera, Pago de Carraovejas, and José Pariente have all bought wineries in DO Ribeiro in the past few years.
And just a few weeks ago, Zamora Company—the group behind Licor 43, Rioja winery Ramón Bilbao, and Rías Baixas winery Mar de Frades—acquired a majority stake in Bodegas Godeval, a founding winery of DO Valdeorras that helped to pioneer Godello’s revival in the 1970s. Zamora Company joins other outsiders who have invested in Valdeorras and its star grape: American importer Jorge Ordóñez has had his Avancia project since 2009, Ribera del Duero-based Pago de los Capellanes debuted its brand, “O Luar de Sil,” in 2014, and CVNE has operated Virgen del Galir in Valdeorras since 2018.
This is all great, in theory. Well-known wineries bring attention and can leverage their marketing capital to spread Galician wine to new consumers. But as I wrote for Jancis Robinson last year, speculation is always a concern whenever a region becomes popular, and it’s no different here. As these large groups from across Spain rush to acquire vineyards, they drive land prices up, fueling a bubble that risks pricing out smaller Galician producers who might not have the means to expand.
It’s not that I think that to own a winery in a particular region you need to be from that region, but it is worrisome to imagine a Galicia whose vineyards are largely controlled by groups that have little to no connection to local traditions or ecosystems. I’ll concede that these wineries do create jobs, but since outside groups have their headquarters elsewhere in Spain, their tax obligations are handled at the national level rather than benefiting Galicia directly in the same way a Galician winery would. And if the principal goal is to drive profits by doing lots of volume on a national / international level, you run the risk of Galicia becoming visible to consumers only through low-priced, mass-market white wines, which doesn’t do the region any favors in the long run.
At the end of the day, the influx of outside investment into Galicia’s wine regions is a double-edged sword. Sure, it brings visibility, capital, and professional expertise, but it also risks eroding Galician cultural identity and sidelining Galician-run estates. *Shakes fist at sky* Something has to be done!
If you’ve read my writing you may have inferred that I tend to be skeptical of the Galician government. But in this case, it wouldn’t be that hard to give Galician-owned wineries preferential access to subsidies and programs to help them expand while maintaining their unique cultural identity. And from a marketing perspective, it would be relatively easy to focus on promoting homegrown wineries—it’s not like the big money wineries lack the means to do their own marketing. That would mean helping smaller, Galician-owned wineries reach national and international audiences and differentiate themselves in a crowded market.
There’s no avoiding more outside investment at this point, but the challenge as more and more outside wineries start circling will be balancing growth with identity and authenticity. How Galicia navigates the tensions between the two will determine whether its wines stay (literally) tied to the land or become just another product in a global portfolio.