Ryan Robinson, Director of Education, Brescome Barton and Worldwide Wines.

By Ryan Robinson, Advanced Sommelier-CMS, WSET Diploma and WSET Educator

A New Year brings new opportunities in your wine shopping adventure. The wine regions of Galicia, Spain, are ripe with diversity while maintaining a high level of quality. Within these appellations, there is a wide range of styles produced that should catch the eye of wine enthusiasts at all levels. This is the third and final piece of a series on the wines of Galicia.

The oldest appellation in Galicia is awarded to Ribeiro DO, established in 1932, four years before any of the French wine appellations received official recognition. Yet, wine culture in this area extends much further, dating back to the Romans as they began cultivating wine here between the first and third centuries. After the fall of the Roman empire, viticulture saw a resurgence in the 12th century. These efforts were led by the Cistercian monks, a splinter group of the Benedictine order, who were more focused on physical labor over religious prayer and studies. Their efforts helped keep the thirsts quenched of the pilgrims traveling along the Camino de Santiago.

The wines of Ribeiro are quite unique. Here, the green grape Treixadura takes center stage, producing some of the best, crisp and fresh examples of white wine. This makes sense given its proximity to the Rías Baixas DO subregion of Condado do Tea, where Treixadura is a common blending grape with Albariño. The hidden gem of Ribeiro, and rarely found, is an obscure sweet style of wine called Vino Tostado. This style is permitted in both the Ribeiro and Valdeorras appellations. Vino Tostado is a sweet wine made from grapes that have been dried for at least three months. The finished wine has, at minimum, 120 g/l of residual sugar. These wines are sweet and delicious and are incredibly rare to find due to the painstakingly laborious effort to stave off of any fungal maladies while the grape is drying. The thick grape skins commonly found with Treixadura make this variety an ideal candidate for Vino Tostado.

Rounding out our coverage of the wine appellations of Galicia is the DO of Ribeira Sacra. The name roughly translates to “sacred riverbank” in reference to the religious churches lined along the riverbanks. This pristine yet vigorously steep growing region is nested along both the Miño and Sil rivers. The steep incline of vineyard sites are the definition of heroic viticulture. During the Roman occupation, terraces were carved out of the mountainsides to make way for grapevines. To this day, those same Roman terraces are used. Due to size and incline, mechanical vehicles are not able to gain access to the majority of the vineyards. Instead, they must be worked by manual labor and a few of the producers have single-rail trollies to carry the handpicked grapes up the mountainside.

Words cannot describe the beauty and wonder of the Ribeira Sacra vineyards. Now, protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site, new residential building is no longer permitted as the pristine awe of this region is forever preserved. There are five subregions that make up this growing area: Ribeiras do Sil, Ribeiras do Miño, Amandi, Chantada and Quiroga-Bibei. Within these subregions, 95% of the production is dedicated to dry red wine production centered on the red grape variety Mencía.

Mencía, native to Spain, most likely originated in the DO of Bierzo in Castilla y León. The high altitude and cooler climate of Ribeira Sacra cultivates an ideal growing environment for this thin-skinned grape that produces fresh, red fruit and herbaceous-laden wines. If you’re a Pinot Noir enthusiast but have been taken aback by the skyrocketing prices, I implore you be adventurous and try a bottle of Mencía. In their youth, they are light, fresh and fruit-driven.

With age, these wines develop an interesting combination of tertiary flavors such as spice, smoke, meat and tobacco. They become very alluring and hedonistic. The small white wine production from the area is crafted from Albariño, Loureira, Doña Blanca and Treixadura. On occasion, you might see the term “Ribeira Sacra Summum.” In short, this term simply means that red wines are produced from 85% of the appellations of the preferred red grape varieties, while white wines carrying the same label must be made from 100% of the preferred green grape varieties.

There are many hidden gems in the world of wine production. The appellations and producers found in Galicia remain at the forefront of my favorites list. The majority of these wines are still the life’s work of small independent families who pass both their skills and vineyards down to their children. Each new generation improves on the work of the previous. I am a fanatic that these wines should make their way onto the shopping list of any wine aficionado, from the hesitant beginner who is just starting to wade into the world of wine to the well-seasoned wine expert.

Ryan Robinson is the Director of Education for Brescome Barton and Worldwide Wines in Connecticut. He is also the Wine Director for Cornerstone Restaurant Group in North America and South Korea, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of New Haven. He holds the credentials of Advanced Sommelier-CMS; WSET Diploma and WSET Educator in Wine, Sake and Beer; Rioja Wine Educator; Wine Scholar Guild Educator and Spanish Wine Specialist; and Certified Scotch Whisky Professional from the Council of Whiskey Masters.

The post Wine Column: The Wines of Galicia, Part 3 appeared first on The Beverage Journal.