Viños de Encostas Máis Alá Godello 2022
£29.45
The wine
This refreshing Godello combines delicate floral notes with citrus fruit, smoke and creamy mineral tones. Harmoniously balanced, with savoury nuance on the palate through to a crisp, elegant finish. Valdeorras is where Godello does its best work.
Godello was reduced to a handful of hectares in Valdeorras by the 1970s and is now regarded as one of Spain's finest white grapes. It grows on steep slate slopes in the upper Sil valley and gives a fuller, more mineral wine than Albariño, with the structure to age. Mais Ala means further beyond.
The producer
Viños de Encostas
View all Viños de Encostas winesVinos 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.
