Argentinian Winery Group Buys Rías Baixas Winery for €3M (June 24)
Argentine Ricardo Fernández, owner of the Vinos de la Luz wine group, has invested over 3 million euros in Señorío de Rubiós, a winery in the village of As Neves, in the Condado do Tea subzone of Rías Baixas. The investment makes Vinos de la Luz the main partner of the company with 68% ownership. Señorío de Rubiós extends over 61.5 hectares of property, half of which are in production. The winery works with white, red and sparkling varieties and in addition to the eponymous brand also releases the ‘Manuel d’Amaro’ line of wines.
Ricardo Fernández committed to maintain the current structure of the winery, made up of 103 partners, and to “respect its associative spirit and the idiosyncrasy of the place”. This is the third investment of the international group Vinos de la Luz in Spain. The company has been working in the Ribera del Duero region for a decade and more recently joined the Cigales wine region. Vinos de la Luz is the latest in a string of large winemaking groups that have invested in Rías Baixas. Vega Sicilia has a project in Crecente, and CVNE or Matarromera have also purchased land in the Condado do Tea subzone.
Despite Abundant Harvest Predictions, Crisis Distillation Remains Uncertain (June 19, June 28, July 10)
Time is ticking in Ribeira Sacra. The harvest is getting closer, and the outlook of finding a market for the entire crop seems quite bleak. According to some estimates, this year there could be one million kilos of unharvested grapes in Ribeira Sacra due to high surplus wine stocks and a subsequent fall in demand for grapes. The real number could be much higher, as the estimate of a million kilos was made based on last year’s harvest of 6.6 million kilos and some sources estimate that this year’s harvest will be even larger.
Faced with huge quantities of grapes being left on the vines, at the beginning of May the Ribeira Sacra Regulatory Council sent documentation requesting a crisis distillation to get rid of the surplus wine that has been sitting in some wineries for the past year. As the harvest gets closer, the European bureaucratic machine doesn’t appear to be moving any faster. “We wanted the response to arrive before the harvest so that the wineries could plan ahead, but everything is proceeding much more slowly than we would like,” explained Antonio Lombardía, president of the regulatory council. Carlos Basalo, from the Unións Agrarias farmers union, said that the application to distill surplus wine in Ribeira Sacra should have been initiated earlier to avoid a “very complex” situation in the countdown to a new harvest. “There is a lot of uncertainty and also uneasiness among the wine growers. They work the vineyards without knowing if the grapes are going to be harvested.”
As of the beginning of August, there has been no answer from Brussels on whether the crisis distillation can move forward or not, leaving around 600 growers in the dark as to whether a year’s worth of labor will rot on the vine.
In Northern Spain, Forgotten Varietals May Hold the Key to Climate-Resistant Vines (June 7)
Local legend says that the wine grape first arrived in Galicia, in the far northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, on the backs of Roman soldiers. They ventured deep into the lush valleys, planting clusters of grapes to harvest when they’d return on subsequent military campaigns. Nowadays, Galicia’s mist-shrouded hills—best known for Albariño production—are covered in a variety of grapevines, some so old the grapes they produce don’t even have names. Historically, these vines have been integral to the local subsistence economy, providing generations of families with wine to drink at home. The region’s humid, oceanic climate yields fresh, minerally wines with what growers describe as a uniquely Atlantic character. But this diversity may also play a key role in viticulture’s future. As rising temperatures and worsening drought conditions wreak havoc on global agriculture, growers and researchers in Spain have been working to resurrect nearly extinct grapes, both to preserve biological heritage and to discover useful genetic traits that could help the industry weather climate change. (Read more at Wine Enthusiast)
DO Valdeorras Approves Rosé Wines (July 30)
The wineries of DO Valdeorras received the green light to begin making rosé wines with the Valdeorras back label. The regulatory council also gave the go-ahead to allow the production of sparkling red and rosé wines in the region. The president of the Regulatory Council, José Ramón Rodríguez Castellanos, said that “we have to adapt to market trends, and rosés are in demand, so it’s a shame not to take advantage of that.”
Harvest 2024 Prediction: Good Quality and Slightly Later than Last Year (July 21)
In mid-August last year, half of Galicia was already preparing to harvest. This year, it seems that won’t be the case. Unpredictable weather and a “summer” that never really arrived have slowed down grape development. What’s clear is that the grapes are in good health and that production will be good, although not as abundant as last year.
In Rías Baixas, humidity and mild temperatures meant that mildew appeared even before the vines sprouted. And the continuous rains prevented grape growers from being able to adequately treat the vineyard to prevent the disease. Fortunately, damages from mildew were negligible, but rains and low temperatures have slowed down the development of the vine. With sun and warmth in August, Rías Baixas will once again have a good harvest, but it could take place at the beginning of September as opposed to the end of August in 2023.
The situation is similar in Valdeorras, where they also expect harvest to be less abundant than last year. Ribeiro, Ribeira Sacra and Monterrei expect a production similar to last year’s, and forecasts are also good in the rest of the Galician appellations of origin. There, everything points to the harvest being similar to last year’s in quantity.