Viños de Encostas

Vinos de Encostas is the project of Luis Anxo Rodriguez Vazquez, one of the growers most responsible for the revival of serious wine in inland Galicia. Encostas means slopes, which is where the interesting vineyards are.

His argument, made through the wines rather than in words, is that Galicia's inland regions were unfairly overshadowed when Rias Baixas took off in the 1980s. Ribeiro has the longer history, exporting to England in the fifteenth century, and Valdeorras holds Godello, a variety reduced to a handful of hectares by the 1970s and now regarded as one of Spain's finest white grapes.

The wines are made in small quantities from old plots on steep slate and granite slopes, several of them worked by hand because nothing else can reach them. Village is a deliberate nod to Burgundy's hierarchy, and the point being made is the same: that these places deserve to be named.