You don’t need to speak Galician or have a degree in Spanish wine to correctly decipher a Galician wine label. Here are a few tips to help see what you’re drinking.
Anatomy of a Wine Label
Here are five key things to look for on a Galician wine label.
1. O Nome: The name of the wine.
2. A Caste: The grape variety or varieties that make up the wine.
3. A Adega: The winery or producer that made the wine.
4. O Lugar: The place where the wine is made (usually includes the name of the Denominación de Orixe, or D.O., occasionally the subregion (i.e. Val do Salnés, Chantada, etc), and sometimes the name of the parcel or vineyard (finca).
5. A Anada: This is the year of the harvest, aka vendima, añada (Spanish) or colleita.
Grape variety: Even though wines from Galicia are old-world wines, many of them are labeled by grape variety. It’s common to see producers including grape names on their labels if their wines are single-variety wines, although it gets trickier when winemakers include multiple grapes in the blend.
Region: Galicia has five denominaciones de orixe and five indicaciones xeográficas protexidas. Most wines belong to a DO or an IXP, but some wines fall into the category of vino da terra. Although these are considered quality designations, it’s more complicated than that. Some winemakers grow grapes within the geographical lines of the DOs but opt to craft wines using their own criteria, making them ineligible for certification by the consello regulador.
More Useful Galician Wine Terms
- Viño branco / viño tinto: white wine / red wine
- Viño de Aldea / Viño de vila: Village wine
- Finca: parcel / vineyard —used to describe single-parcel wines
- Pazo: a manor house, the Galician equivalent of a château
- Barrica: barrel — generally this means the wines have > 6 months of barrel age
- Carballo: oak, in Galician (“roble” in Spanish)
- Castaño: chestnut
- Viñas / cepas vellas: old vines
- Embotellado na propiedade: estate-bottled
- Viticultura heroica: heroic viticulture—used to describe wines of the Ribeira Sacra