Albariño & Friends

“…it could snap the sky in half…” [Tamlyn Currin]: New Pentecostés and Santiago Ruiz
Albariño & Friends

We’d been dying to return to Spain’s Galician coast for some time, so our visit in early 2023 could not come soon enough. It did not disappoint. Tim Atkin MW, who knows these estuaries and inlets well, recently wrote that Rías Baixas is “one of the most exciting areas in Europe right now.” After spending just a few days in the region, visiting ten producers, it’s hard to disagree.   


 
When we first visited the area, the real power was in the hands of a small group of large negociant-producers: a seaside Rioja on a micro-scale. Those producers are still very much on the scene and, for the most part, making ever more characterful and interesting wines. Today, scores of small, terroir-focused independent projects have entered the picture, bringing a wealth of energy, innovation, and a progressive, low-intervention ideology to the farming and the region’s star variety, Albariño. 


 
Rosa Ruiz’s father was responsible for the creation of the Rías Baixas D.O., selling his first twenty boxes of estate-bottled Vino de El Rosal to a restaurant in Vigo in 1981. Beaming with pride, Rosa took us to the original 17th-century winery in San Miguel de Tabagón, where she maintains a tiny museum containing the rudimentary equipment that her father used to craft his early vintages. Times have changed. In 2007, the estate moved up the road to Tomiño, where talented Galician-born winemaker Luisa Freire keeps this pioneering estate bang up to date with her juicy, granite-influenced wines. 
 


About half an hour’s drive from one of the oldest properties in Rías Baixas, is one of its newest. Pentecostés winemaker Jorge Marcote is making electric wines from terraced vineyards nestled among the lush Atlantic forests of the Miñor Valley. Marcote is emblematic of the young, instinct-driven winemakers shifting the dial in Rías Baixas. Natural yeast fermentation, skin contact and oak barrels are all part of his toolbox, resulting in striking, salty-steely, food-friendly whites that go toe-to-toe with Europe’s best. His passion for less-known varieties is also well-founded: Pentecostés’s blended wine is arguably even more exhilarating than its straight Albariño.

The Wines

Bodegas Pentecostés Rías Baixas Albariño 2022
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Bodegas Pentecostés Rías Baixas Albariño 2022

Drawn from the granite terraces of the Pazo de Barreiro within spitting distance of the Atlantic Ocean, this a wonderfully taut and mineral style of Albariño with mouth-watering acidity wrapped around a dense core of fleshy fruit. The winemaking for both Pentecostés wines is effectively the same. The grapes are hand-harvested and stored overnight at 10 degrees, and slow fermentations take place at cellar temperature in stainless-steel tanks, with a small portion of the harvest fermented in French oak. The wines are then raised on lees, undisturbed, for six months.

Look forward to mouth-watering, chiselled texture, flavours of pulpy orchard fruit, citrus pith and sea spray all cusped by pithy drive and zappy energy. Oceanic Riesling, perhaps. This heart-starting Albariño will age and build complexity as it goes, but it’s the kind of wine that will instantly wow alongside any seafood.

“At first, smooth with a kind of marbled creaminess flecked with fennel and liquorice. White flowers, bitter citrus peel, and so, so salty. I can smell and taste the North Atlantic sea in this wine. But also flowers – it smells like the heather and gorse on those Galician cliffs. Intensely salty on the finish. So taut it could snap the sky in half. It really tastes of its place.”
Tamlyn Currin, Jancisrobinson.com
Bodegas Pentecostés Rías Baixas Albariño 2022
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Bodegas Pentecostés Rías Baixas Varietales 2022
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Bodegas Pentecostés Rías Baixas Varietales 2022

Albariño is the headline grape variety of Rías Baixas—and headlines sell. Yet behind the scenes, the finest growers will tell you that the region's less well-known native varieties have an increasingly important supporting role to play. The steak is good, but the sauce completes the dish. Varietales is a blend of Albariño with 20% Caíño Blanco, 20% Loureiro and a drop of Treixadura.

Winemaker Jorge Marcote is evangelical about Caíño Blanco, which here brings flesh-piercing acidity and phenolic bite. Aromas lead you to yellow stone fruits, iodine freshness, rocks and minerals; then, mouthwatering flourishes of green mango and figgy, stony extract anchored by bow-like tension and a steely kick on the finish. A killer Spanish white that holds its own against the best of France.

Bodegas Pentecostés Rías Baixas Varietales 2022
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Santiago Ruiz Rías Baixas O Rosal 2023
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Santiago Ruiz Rías Baixas O Rosal 2023

The domaine's core vineyards lie at Tomiño in O Rosal—the most southerly of Rías Baixas’ five subzones. Situated on the top lip of the river Miño (which marks the border with Portugal), O Rosal enjoys more sunlight hours and a drier climate than Rías Baixas’ other subzones. The vineyards here also benefit from cooling Atlantic breezes as well as the moderating influence and airflow from the river. This set of natural circumstances favours a style of wine that is both ripe and mineral-laden, with granitic soils and cool Atlantic nights providing crisp energy and drive.

With an unusually high percentage of Albariño this year, the 2023 weighs in at 82% Albariño, 9% Loureiro, with the balance from Treixadura, Caíño Blanco and a dash of Godello. Winemaker Luisa Freire treats each variety individually, using lees-aging to build a winning combination of texture, structure and freshness. There’s joyous cool stone fruit and fuzzy peach intensity over a backbone of Atlantic tension. This is a deliciously juicy release with textured mineral structure, a nip of kernel spice and granitic grip on the classy finish. Peachy keen.

Santiago Ruiz Rías Baixas O Rosal 2023
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Santiago Ruiz Rías Baixas Rosa Ruiz Albariño 2023
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Santiago Ruiz Rías Baixas Rosa Ruiz Albariño 2023

Alongside its Tomiño vines, Santiago Ruiz maintains a second, small parcel of old-vine Albariño at the original 17th century winery in San Miguel de Tabagón. Situated 10 kilometres west of the Tomiño plantings towards the Miño estuary, these 40-year-old vines are trained in the traditional parral canopy fashion, anchored by granite posts. The gnarled, skinny trunks produce low yields of highly concentrated fruit used exclusively for the estate’s 100% Albariño, Rosa Ruiz.

A touch of skin contact and extended lees maturation gives this wine a stonier feel than the O Rosal bottling. Raised in small stainless-steel vessels to enrich the texture, it's a chiselled Albariño showing engaging purity, top notes of ripe lemon and sea spray, with plenty of surface and lingering traces of tangy acidity and chalk. Taking its cues from its granite soils, it is a cracking example of the grape and the region.

Santiago Ruiz Rías Baixas Rosa Ruiz Albariño 2023
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