Rías Baixas’ History: From Galicia to the World

Rías Baixas is the largest Denominación de Origen in Galicia, with more hectares under vine than Galicia’s other four DOs combined. Its rise to international recognition transformed its star grape, Albariño, from an unknown regional curiosity to one of the most—if not the most—recognized white wines from Spain.

Today, we use ‘Rías Baixas’ to talk about both the wine region and the geographical area in the south of Galicia. But up until the Denominación de Origen was formed in 1986, no one was calling the wine-growing area of this part of Galicia “Rías Baixas.” Instead, they used the names that were later given to the subzones—Condado de Tea, O Rosal, Salnés, etc.—to talk about the wines from this part of Galicia. In 1988, a handful of pioneers tied together three different winemaking areas via the the one thing they shared: Albariño. Over the next two decades, they built a brand-new wine region from the ground up, and brought a grape with just over 200 hectares planted back from the brink of extinction.

The Rías Baixas wine appellation created a new identity for the region based around one grape, and gave thousands of people a way to make a living from wine.

These days, wine from Rías Baixas is known all over the world, but it wasn’t always that way. In this region that’s practically synonymous with Albariño, people made red wine for centuries. Modern Rías Baixas may be only 40 years old, but people have been making wine here since Roman times.

The First Vines: Lagares Rupestres and Romans

In 137 BC, the Romans marched into Galicia and added a new province to their empire, naming it Gallaecia. Prior to the Roman invasion, the area’s original inhabitants, a tribe called the Gallaeci, were probably sitting around drinking beer and cider. Archeologists tell us that the very first people to live in this corner of the Iberian Peninsula used stone presses to extract fruit juices, which they probably fermented and drank. No direct evidence of Gallaecian winemaking exists, but it’s possible they could have fermented wild grapes too.

Galipedia user Alexandre Vigo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lansbricae from España, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)

The biggest piece of evidence that the Romans started the tradition of viticulture in the region came to light as recently as 2020. A study published in the Australian Journal for Grape and Wine Research that compared ancient Roman grape seeds discovered in an archeological dig near Vigo to modern-day grape varieties found that the Roman seeds were extremely similar to our modern Albariño. Ergo, it stands to reason that soon after the Romans got to Rías Baixas they got down to business taming and cultivating the wild grapes they found there. 

Despite these findings, there’s no real historical or archeological evidence to definitively prove that the Romans made wine in the Rías Baixas. For the first documents that give us a clear idea of how winemaking got started, we need to jump ahead a few centuries.

The Medieval Period

The discovery of the remains of Saint James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela led to an explosion of Christianity in Galicia. A church built over the apostle’s tomb began to receive pilgrims, who made their way to Santiago along a route that became known as the Camino de Santiago, or “Way of Saint James.” Churches and monasteries sprang up along the Camino to serve both the pilgrims’ spiritual needs and the needs of the flesh—mainly wine, the beverage par excellence of any good Spanish monk. The Benedictine monks of Cluny, already establishing themselves as pro winemakers, were sent to watch over these new centers of religion and viticulture.

Santa María de Oia Monastery, © Noah Chichester 2022

From Santiago, the spiritual home of Galician Christianity, the monks spread out and founded new monasteries like the Monasterio de Armenteira in the Salnés Valley and the Santa María de Oia monastery, near O Rosal. Among the monks’ main jobs was the cultivation of vineyards. Documents from the centuries that follow help us trace the growth of vineyards throughout the modern-day Rías Baixas, until by the 18th century there were vines in most of the territory included in the modern-day Denominación de Origen. 

During that same century, the Spanish government seized property owned by the Church and sold them off to wealthy nobles, so most of the monasteries’ former lands ended up in private hands. The change in ownership didn’t have much effect on winemaking, which continued uninterrupted. Until…

The Crisis of the 19th Century

Maccheek at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In 1851, a creeping grey illness was affecting vines all over Spain. First appearing as grey patches, it quickly spread over entire vineyards, destroying crops and leaving nothing but misery in its wake. This was powdery mildew, known as oídium in Spanish. Its ideal growing conditions are humid places with gentle temperatures all year round. Sound familiar?

Powdery mildew took hold with a vengeance in Pontevedra province, destroying crops all along the Miño River and sending countless families who depended on grape-growing into years of hunger and misery. When sulfur treatments arrived almost ten years later, it looked like the vines were finally saved and life could get back to normal.

But another plague, downy mildew, or simply mildiu in Spanish, was on the horizon. Luckily, by the time it landed in Galicia in 1885, treatments with Bordeaux mixture—a combination of copper sulfate, lime, and water—were already generalized in most of Spain. But these treatments were costly for growers, and made profits from viticulture increasingly scarce.

To add insult to injury, phylloxera came to town. Although its effects shouldn’t be underestimated, many vines in Rías Baixas escaped damage, possibly due to the high concentrations of sand in the soils. For this reason, some of the oldest pre-phylloxeric vines in the world can be found in Meaño, in the Val do Salnés, dating back to at least the late 1700s.

The 20th Century

After phlloxera, vines all over Galicia were replaced with new grape varieties, most of which were grafted to naturally phylloxera-resistant American rootstocks. But in the province of Pontevedra, growers opted for a different type of vine called híbridos productores directos (HPD) or “direct producer hybrids.” As their name tells us, these hybrids were created from the genetic cross between vitis rupestris or vitis riparia—grape species native to the Americas—with vitis vinifera. Unlike other vines that had to be grafted to American rootstock, HPDs could be planted directly in the ground, without any need for grafting. HPDs were successful in Pontevedra because they grew well—which was important when nearly half the vitis-American grafts failed after planting—and they were considerably cheaper than other options.

"Folla Redonda," literally "Round Leaf," one of the most common HPDs in Rías Baixas

Ironically, HPDs had incredibly low resistance to phylloxera, the very problem they were supposed to solve.

They became prevalent in areas like the Salnés Valley, where phylloxera barely had any effect on vines because of the humidity and sandy soils.

Over the next few decades, HPDs would slowly take over in Rías Baixas until they made up the majority of the vines planted there.

Besides all these HPDs, locals also grafted red grapes like espadeiro to American rootstock. What about modern-day Rías Baixas’ most famous grape? Albariño was there, but not nearly as prized or as famous as it was today. About all that we can find written about it in this period is that people in the area made wine with albariño that was similar to Vinho Verde of Portugal. 

One reason for albariño’s scarcity during the twentieth century was that it only made sense for families with enough money to afford the luxury of a wine that wouldn’t be sold right away. Where most grape-growers sold nearly all their crop to make ends meet, Albariño wine was given as a gift or kept to enjoy the following summer. This meant it was restricted to wealthier landowning families, who only produced small quantities. For everyone else, red wine reigned supreme—its higher yields meant growers were assured of an income. But in just a few short decades, all that was about to change.

Albariño: The Comeback Kid

 In 1953, Bernardino Quintanilla, a self-taught lawyer from Vigo with a small vineyard of Albariño, made a bet. He challenged Ernesto Zárate, a local landowner and winemaker, to a vinous duel: the lawyer suggested that his wine could conquer his friend’s in a tasting. Zárate accepted the challenge, and on the night of August 28, 1953 they held the first-ever Concurso do Albariño, or the Albariño Competition. It wasn’t only Quintanilla and Zárate who participated; in total, nine growers from a select circle of mutual acquaintances presented their wines at a dinner held in a friend’s garden. 

In the end, neither Campanilla nor Zárate won! Local farmer José Rodiño took home first prize and left the two men hungry for a rematch. What began as a bet between friends turned into a competition that was celebrated the next year, and the next year, and the next. 

70 years later, the Festa do Albariño is a Galician summer staple, and holds a lot of the credit for catapulting this previously unknown Galician grape to fame.

But a yearly festival wouldn’t do much without a quality product to promote. Luckily, technological advances in both viticulture and winemaking helped to regularize Albariño production. At the end of the 1970s, the little grape hadn’t just become popular in Galicia, but it was starting to spread to the rest of Spain too. 

The Birth of a Wine Region

The little wine region we know today as Rías Baixas was starting to look more like its modern-day version at the end of the 1970s. The lure of Albariño was strong, and merchants were buying it for triple the price of red wine. Pooling their resources, local growers formed a cooperative winery, soon to be followed by other cooperatives. Driven by demand for Albariño in the restaurants of Santiago and A Coruña, they began using innovations like stainless steel tanks and temperature-controlled fermentations to ensure clean, drinkable, consumer-friendly wines. But these higher-quality Albariños were still a minority, outnumbered by low-quality, high-alcohol, fruity wines imported from Castilla. Some distributors mixed these wines with a small proportion of Galician wine, and sold them as Albariño from Galicia. 

There certainly wasn’t any sense of regional unity either. At the beginning of the 1980s, no one was using the term Rías Baixas, and most people didn’t even refer to Albariño by the its name! Instead, consumers tended to order wine using what are today the region’s subzones, differentiating between a “Condado,” a “Rosal,” and a “Salnés.” A lot of producers didn’t use any label at all, which left consumers in the dark as to the wine’s origins.

"The Typical Wine From Rosal Has Never Been Carbonated, As Is Generally Thought" - El Pueblo Gallego, 1960

In the late 70’s and early 80’s, people began to push back against these practices, calling for the creation of an official wine appellation to regulate the wines claiming to be Albariño. They knew that they had a quality product on their hands, if they could just separate out the phony “Albariño” on the market.

"They Ought to Police Fake Albariños" -Salvador Duran Jabois, local grower

In 1980, the answer came in the form of the Denominación Específica Albariño, an appellation that applied only to wines made with Albariño within a recognized geographical area, which—showing great restraint—contained the whole of Galicia. The Denominación Específica was created in 1981. That same year, the newly-formed consello regulador held technical workshops and tried to come up with regulations to help control production and quality, as well as crack down on fraud while launching Albariño into a larger marketplace.

"Albariño will have its denomincación específica very soon, to avoid adulterations and fakes" - La Voz de Galicia, 7/31/1983

But this Denominación Específica was doomed from the start. Spain’s pending entry into the European Economic Community meant it would have to comply with the rest of Europe and use a system of appellations based not on grape variety, but rather on origin. The logic was, and still is, that no one can exclusively lay claim to a specific variety. As long as they’re approved by a Protected Designation of Origin, grapes can be planted anywhere, regardless of whether they appear under one or twenty appellations of origin. 

As a result, the Denominación Específica became a Denominación de Origen. To be able to successfully sell their wines to the rest of Europe, Albariño producers needed to enter the European Common Market under the umbrella of “quality wines,” which required them to obtain a designation of origin. Otherwise, they would have to sell a product they considered to be of the highest quality as ordinary table wine in the rest of Europe, which was as much a matter of pride as it was a pragmatic economic decision.

But as anyone who has tangled with bureaucrats knows, there’s always a catch. In order for the fledgling Denominación de Origen to be approved, the law required at least 25% of the proposed DO’s vineyards to be planted to preferred grape varieties and registered with the regulatory council. This was a serious problem for the province of Pontevedra, since it was covered with HPDs and some vineyards were made up of 80 or 90% hybrid varieties.

The immediate consequence was that some areas of the Salnés Valley, O Rosal, and Condado do Tea were temporarily excluded from the new appellation, although they could enter when they reached the required 25% of authorized varieties. Other areas like the modern IXP of Ribeiras do Morrazo were also left out, ostensibly for grape-related reasons—though there’s a conflicting rumor that political conflicts are also to blame.

The task of ensuring that the proposed DO had enough eligible hectares fell to just a few key figures. Marisol Bueno, José Antonio Lopez, Manolo Padín, and Hernando Martínez covered the countryside, holding meetings and trying by any means necessary to convince the region’s often-skeptical growers to register their vines and in some cases replace the high-production hybrids with Albariño, a complicated variety whose yields would initially be much lower. Convincing a Galician to do anything is near impossible work, but somehow they did it. On July 4, 1988, the new wine appellation was officially approved by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture.

Rías Baixas in the 21st Century

In just over 30 years of existence, Rías Baixas has lived a meteoric rise to fame, both nationally and internationally.

The 900,000 kilos of grapes that entered the DO in 1988 have grown to 43 million in the 2021 vintage. The vines that produce all these grapes now cover over 4,000 hectares, a far cry from the humble 237 hectares 30 years ago. About a third of the 36 million bottles sold in 2021 made their way to more than 70 countries, with key markets in the United States, United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan. The three cooperatives, Condes de Albarei, Paco & Lola, and Martín Codax lead the business, with this last one helped in no small part by the deal signed in 2007 between Martín Codax and E&J Gallo, the world’s largest wine distributor. Within Spain, sales have increased as well. In 2021, Rías Baixas marked a growth in sales of 14.6%, a full two points above the average growth of wine consumption in Spain. Two new subzones were added to help meet all this demand: Soutomaior, in1996, and Ribeira do Ulla, in 2000.

With wine sales skyrocketing, one challenge Rías Baixas will face in the years to come will be to create greater value for its wines, repositioning them in a category of quality for which consumers are willing to pay more. The DO is already making progress as far as exports are concerned: a liter of Albariño goes for a higher price than the average for Spanish wines.

But all this growth is not without its critics: some caution that Rías Baixas runs the risk of dying from success. Successful marketing campaigns and steady growth in sales have left wineries without any stock to spare for several years now. For a product largely dependent on the whims of Mother Nature, a bad harvest could prove disastrous. Others criticize the use of commercial yeasts in place of wild ones, or the mixture of grapes from one subzone with another.

The challenges of basing a wine region’s identity on one grape are also making themselves known. Consumers can now find Albariño from Uruguay, California, New Zealand, and Australia on retail shelves. The grape has also been authorized in other parts of Spain. Rías Baixas will need to inform wine lovers what—beyond Albariño—makes it unique.

Ultimately, the future of Rías Baixas will depend on its ability to balance growth with authenticity, ensuring that its wines remain not just abundant, but unmistakably its own.