Natalia Rodriguez left her law job in Vigo and never looked back. She returned to her family home in the countryside, in Galicia’s Condado do Tea, where her father made wine from a small 2-hectare vineyard of albariño. When she took over the winemaking from her father, she began to wonder if it was possible to grow grapes in a more sustainable way—organic albariño—without using all the pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides that were common in the “better living through chemistry” school of winemaking so many small growers followed.
Twelve years later, her project Bodegas Corisca is known for being the first certified organic albariño producer in Rías Baixas—no mean feat in a region known for its rain and humidity. We sat down to talk about the Condado do Tea and what makes it unique, the challenges and joys of growing organic albariño, and Natalia’s experiences with natural wine.
“When you’re a teenager, all you want is to be in the city at the mall—not pressing grapes at harvest,” jokes Natalia. She did escape the country life and get a job working in the courts in Vigo. But at some point, she says, all the concepts of countryside and winemaking that were rattling around in her head came out “when they were supposed to come out,” and she decided to trade city life for the countryside, trying her hand at winemaking. And not just conventional winemaking, but organic winemaking—almost unheard of in Rías Baixas at the time.
Looking for an answer to whether it was even possible, she started talking to the larger wineries in the area—all of which told her “no way!” But undeterred—she calls herself “a bit” stubborn—she contacted organic growers in Burgundy, Portugal, and Navarra to seek out their way of doing things. Armed with the knowledge of others, she came back to Rías Baixas and immediately started converting her father’s vineyard to organic.
“That first year I lost everything,” she laughs. “I thought my father was going to kill me!”
Gradually she figured out the best way to work the vines without adding any of the products to which they were so accustomed. She bought new plots of land from neighbors who were going to abandon them, and replanted vines—some in the classic trellises of Rías Baixas, others in cordon, and others in the one-armed Portuguese style.
Even thought the Condado is inland and warmer than the coastal Salnés Valley where the vast majority of Albariño production takes place, Natalia still experiences fungal pressure. Apart from extensive green pruning and cutting down the vigorous albariño vine, she uses the bacillus fungus against mildew in a biological fight strategy: the bacillus fungi occupy the space of the mildew without actually causing damage to the leaves or the vine.
Organic albariño still tastes the same as regular albariño—at least according to its grower. Natalia compares it to other organic products, like a tomato. “You can buy an organic tomato and a non-organic tomato. Both are tomatoes. Both taste like tomatoes. But the raw material, what you’re going to do with one or the other, that’s important.”
For Natalia, the most important thing is that her wines are grown as simply as possible and reflect the grape and the area where it’s planted. For her, wines from the Condado should taste like wines from the Condado—not like the “typical” Albariño profile based on wines from the Salnés Valley.
60% of her (small) production is dedicated to export to countries like England, Germany, Denmark or the United States. Asked why someone should try an organic Albariño from the Condado do Tea, Natalia’s response skews away from the typical Galician, “it depends.” Apart from defending her organic albariño as a true expression of grape and terroir, she says that white wines from Galicia have some of the greatest potential in the world. “I love working with them over time, on the lees, in wood… Galicia is a privileged area and it’s worth trying the top products that it offers thanks to its unique climate.”