Adega Algueira Pizarra Ribeira Sacra 2021
£30.95
The wine
Pizarra, named for the slate soils that define it, is one of Adega Algueira’s most characterful reds. A Ribeira Sacra blend led by Mencía with Brancellao and Caíño Blanco, from old terraced vines worked almost entirely by hand.
Perfumed and savoury, it shows red cherry, dried herbs and violets over a cool, stony minerality, with fine tannins and bright acidity. Distinctly Atlantic in style, elegant rather than heavy.
Beautiful with red meats, game, lamb and mature cheeses, and versatile at the table. Serve slightly cool, with a little air if young.
The producer
Adega Algueira
View all Adega Algueira winesAdega Algueira is one of the great names of Ribeira Sacra, the dramatic Galician region where vines cling to terraces so steep they seem to plunge towards the Sil river below. This family winery is admired well beyond Spain, with the critic Luis Gutiérrez ranking it among the region’s finest, for refined wines that could only come from this wild corner of the north-west.
Its story is one of rescue. When Fernando González Riveiro arrived in 1980, the once-Roman terraces lay abandoned and all but forgotten. Convinced of their potential, he began restoring them by hand, and in 1996, the very year the Ribeira Sacra appellation was created, he built his winery in the prized sub-zone of Amandi. Today he works alongside his son Fabio, a local hero turned quiet pioneer.
Across some thirty hectares and around 130 tiny plots, the family farms indigenous Galician varieties including Godello, Treixadura, Albariño and Mencía, much of it on slopes too sheer for anything but work by hand. Slate and schist lend Mencía its tension and minerality, while granite brings freshness and lift to the whites. The wines are elegant, expressive and quietly thrilling, a fitting tribute to a landscape reclaimed.
