Ribeiro may not be the first thing on your radar when you think of Galicia, but this wine region is a historical powerhouse and deserves much more recognition than it gets.
It’s Galicia’s oldest designation of origin, dating back to 1932. But centuries before it was recognized as a wine appellation, its three valleys were the heart and soul of wine production in Galicia. Wine from Ribeiro has an impressive resumé. It’s been cultivated since Roman times, perfected by monks, and served on the tables of kings and queens. At its height, it was exported to all of Europe, written about by Cervantes, and it even holds the distinction of being the very first wine to travel from Spain to the New World.
Ready to learn more about this amazing historical wine region? Let’s keep going…
A Little Geography
Ribeiro is located in south-central Galicia, on the northwestern edge of the province of Ourense and bordering the province of Pontevedra to the southwest. Its 2,500 hectares of vineyards spread out from the central hub of Ribadavia, and extend to the north, south, and west, hugging the Avia, Miño, and Arnoia river valleys.
Ribeiro’s terrain is marked primarily by the valleys of the Miño, Avia and Arnoia rivers.
These valleys are surrounded by flat areas that gradually increase in altitude to the west, reaching up into the foothills of the central Galician mountain range.
Ribeiro has different, staggered levels of terrain descending from about 1,000 meters above sea level in the west near Carballeda de Avia to just over 100 meters ASL at the bottom of the valleys. This is just the natural terrain; later we’ll take a look at the man-made terraces that historically defined viticulture here.
Val do Avia
The Avia River valley, or Val do Avia, follows the course of the Avia River through the towns of Beade, Carballeda de Avia, Cenlle, Leiro, and part of Boborás, O Carballiño, Ribadavia and San Amaro.
It’s covered with historic aristocratic houses, stone farmhouses, and monasteries that once held sway over the most prestigious vineyards in Ribeiro. At its height, over 80% of the Avia River valley’s slopes were covered with vines. In the northern part of the valley, vines are still cultivated on terraces called socalcos. Vines are also planted on flat land on the valley floor, close to the Avia River. Further south, vineyards follow the river until it flows into the Miño River near Ribadavia.
Val de Arnoia
The Arnoia River valley is located in the south of Ribeiro. Here, vines are planted on south and southeast-facing slopes on the banks of the Arnoia River.
The village of Arnoia sits on the banks of the Arnoia river, close to where it flows into the Miño. The passage of the Arnoia river creates two small valleys. The first, San Amaro Valley, is located in the north, and further south is San Vicente Valley. San Amaro is warmer than San Vicente, and covered with hundreds of tiny parcels of vineyards. The majority of these face south and receive the sun all day long. San Vicente’s slopes face mainly southeast or northwest, but like San Amaro, its slopes have many different orientations. To the south, Cortegada is more exposed to the Atlantic winds that come up the Miño, making its climate slightly cooler.
Val do Miño
In the Miño River valley, vineyards are mostly on south-facing slopes at relatively low altitudes.
The Val do Miño is the largest valley, and it also has the largest number of wineries. It includes the towns of Castrelo de Miño, Punxín and parts of Cenlle, Ourense, Ribadavia and Toén. This valley was once the most fertile in the whole area, but in 1969 the electric company Fenosa dammed the Miño and flooded the valley, despite protests from the people of Ribeiro. Nowadays, the reservoir acts as a moderating influence for the vineyards located on its banks, and vines benefit from the protection against drastic changes in temperatures.
The Land of a Thousand Rivers
What’s in a name? In this case, everything. Ribeiro means “riverbank” in Galician, and the region’s name reflects its most important feature. Ribeiro’s rivers are its lifeblood, the veins through which its culture, economy, landscape, and life have passed for centuries.
The writer Ramón Otero Pedrayo said that Galicia is the land of a thousand rivers, and a good number of those are right here in Ribeiro. From the smallest of trickling streams to the lean, muscular Avia or the lazy Castrelo Reservoir, all the rivers here have a role to play in the landscape, irrigating meadows and orchards and gently creating a climate suited to viticulture. The big players in Ribeiro are its three main rivers: the Avia, Arnoia, and Miño.
The Avia River begins in the Serra do Suído mountain range, above the northern limits of the Ribeiro wine appellation, and runs south toward Ribadavia. Over the course of its 38 kilometers, it looks up at the slopes that once held the great historical vineyards of this area, home to some of the most compelling scenery in the whole area. Its river valley was once the “golden mile” of Ribeiro, with places like Leiro, Gomariz, San Clodio, and Beade filling the area with riches.
The Arnoia River begins in San Mamede, in the province of Ourense, and runs through valleys opened through tectonic action on its way to the village of Arnoia. There, it finishes its journey and empties into the Miño. Its river valley is one of the prime growing zones in Ribeiro, and today it’s the playground for some of Ribeiro’s most dynamic wine producers like Luis Anxo Rodríguez or Bernardo Estévez.
The Miño River enters Ribeiro from the east after covering nearly 250 kilometers from its source in the mountains of Lugo and passing through the Ribeira Sacra wine region. South of Cortegada, it enters the Condado do Tea subzone of the Rías Baixas appellation. The gentle slopes around the artificial reservoir of Castrelo do Miño allow grapes to get plenty of sunshine and ripen easily.
Ribeiro's Climate
Ribeiro’s location spanning river valleys to the east of several major mountain chains gives it a unique climate, with four well-differentiated seasons, temperature contrasts between summer and winter, and low rainfall compared with the rest of Galicia.
Ribeiro’s location in Galicia’s so-called “transition zone” means its climate is a mixture of the maritime climate of Galicia’s coastline and the Mediterranean climate of the Spanish central plain. Both of these climate systems moderate and soften the other.
The Serra do Suído and the Serra do Faro de Avión ranges make a barrier that slows the passage of the storms that batter the Atlantic coast, and also absorb a lot of the rain that the storms carry with them through the Foehn effect. This moderates Ribeiro’s climate and limits its annual rainfall to an average of 800 mm.
Cool, wet air from the Atlantic hits the Serra do Suído and Serra do Faro de Avión ranges, rises, and condenses into rain. The warmer, drier air comes down on the other side of the mountain. See it in action here.
Temperatures in Ribeiro show a tendency toward a transitional climate, with bigger differences between winter and summer than on Galicia’s coast. Average yearly temperatures here are about 14° C (57° F). January is the coldest month with an average of 7° C (44° F), and the hottest is August, averaging 22° C (72° F).
The incredibly diverse topography left by tectonic action and millions of years of erosion creates hundreds of tiny microclimates which means that one parcel has different conditions from its neighbor because of factors like its exposition and altitude. The hundreds of streams that run into Ribeiro’s main rivers also affect the air temperature around them, causing grapes from some parcels to ripen faster or slower than those from neighboring vines.
Ribeiro's Soils
Ribeiro has mostly granite bedrock, with some areas of schist and slate as well as sedimentary rocks.
Like Rías Baixas, the granite in Ribeiro undergoes weathering and cracking from rain and humidity until it decomposes into a sandy soil with small pebbles of quartz and mica. Known as xabre in Rías Baixas, in Ribeiro this decomposed granite soil is called sábrego.
Differences in the bedrock mostly stand out in the texture: soils developed from granites tend to be sandy, and those that formed from metamorphic rocks range from loamy to silty. The high ratio of sand to clay favors the final quality of the grapes since Ribeiro receives less rainfall in summer and the high drainage factor of the sandy soils means vines have to work harder to take in water.
Ribeiro’s soils are naturally acidic and not particularly fertile, but they have the particular distinction of another geographical factor: human intervention. Ribeiro has been under intense vineyard cultivation for at least a thousand years, and these cultivated soils—also known as anthropic soils—are different from the “natural” soils of the region.
Anthropic soils stand out for two main reasons: terracing, and fertilization.
Almost all the historical vineyards in Ribeiro are on terraces, built to decrease the steepness of slopes, increase soil depth, and protect from erosion.
Starting from the top of the hills down, generations of growers in Ribeiro fertilized the soils with organic matter like gorse, which grows plentifully at the tops of the mountains. This organic matter gradually made the fine, sandy soils clump together and added nutrients for vines as well.
Colleiteiros and Adegueiros
Another thing that makes Ribeiro unique among Galicia’s wine regions is that it makes a legal distinction between two groups of wine producers: colleiteiros, or cosecheros in Spanish, both of which roughly translate to “harvesters,” and adegas, or wineries.
The role of the colleiteiro has a long tradition in Ribeiro, and it was incorporated into DO Ribeiro’s bylaws in 1987. Colleiteiros are growers: rural farmers who grow their own grapes and make wine for their consumption. The term has expanded over the years to refer to commercial wineries. Regardless of size, in most of these smaller operations, the colleiteiro is a grower, winemaker, and salesperson—overseeing the entire production cycle from vineyard to distribution. Although the maximum limit is around 80,000 bottles, it’s common for winemakers to produce smaller quantities. These wines are also often referred to in Spanish as vinos de autor, or artisan wines.
To be legally registered as a colleiteiro, growers have to make less than 60,000 liters of wine a year, using only grapes they grow themselves—no purchased fruit allowed. On the other hand, adegas can have higher production volumes and use their own grapes and fruit they buy from other growers.
The number of colleiteiros has declined over the past decade because of a number of factors, including the lack of a younger generation to take over the work, and policies by the Ribeiro appellation that are unfavorable to smaller operations.
Wines from Ribeiro
Ribeiro has four styles of wines: white, red, sparkling, and tostado.
White wines from Ribeiro are usually single-variety Treixadura wines, or made from a blend of Treixadura and other varieties. They have great acidity and fruit flavors, with notes of peach, apricot, and honey, as well as ripe citrus fruit and even white flowers and herbs.
Red wines from Ribeiro are made from traditional Galician varieties like Sousón, Brancellao, or Mencía. They’re also very acidic, and tend to be lower in alcohol, around 11-12%. They have a huge variety of flavors, from floral to fruity to spicy, depending on the grapes used.
Sparkling wines are only a tiny fraction of Ribeiro’s wine production, and they tend to taste like the grape they’re made from, with the usual traditional method notes of bakery and brioche.
Viño Tostado is Ribeiro’s best-kept secret. It’s a sweet wine, made from grapes that are left to dry using only air currents. The dried grapes are then pressed and fermented, and aged in a barrel for several months. The resulting wine is golden and unctuous, with floral aromas like honeysuckle and orange blossom, as well as candied orange peel and raisin. Like any sweet wine, Viño Tostado has high acidity to keep it balanced, and alcohol levels around 14%.
Palomino, the grape that’s responsible for the success of Jerez, became prevalent in Ribeiro after phylloxera because it grew massive quantities of grapes.
Unfortunately, it didn’t make very good-quality wines, but it remained the majority grape in the region until the end of the 20th century, when growers and the regulatory council began to put their faith in traditional grape varieties like Treixadura.
Wines from Ribeiro have evolved a lot over the years from their beginnings in the 12th century to the present day. We don’t know much about the wines that those monks would have drunk, but we can say that some of the grapes planted today in Ribeiro are the same varieties that people were cultivating centuries ago. Although people have always made both white and red wine in Ribeiro, the region has always been more famous for its whites. Modern white Ribeiro wines are made from grapes like treixadura, lado, torrontés, and palomino, and there are also quite a few vineyards of albariño and godello.
White wines from Ribeiro also stand out for being blends, rather than monovarietals. The wines that became famous all over Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries were made from a blend of treixadura, torrontés, and lado. The last of these almost went extinct during the phylloxera crisis, and nowadays is only found in the Arnoia region.
Did you enjoy this article? Check out this deep dive into Ribeiro’s history.