Viños de Encostas Village Ribeiro 2022
£22.25
The wine
Intense aromas with floral, citrus and ripe fruit notes alongside mineral undertones and hints of smoke and cream. Dense, balanced and fresh on the palate, with mineral depth, fruity richness and a very direct, tasty profile. The finish is long, flavoursome and intense.
Village is a deliberate nod to Burgundy's hierarchy, and the point is the same: that Galicia's inland places deserve to be named rather than blended anonymously. Ribeiro's steep granite and slate slopes are worked largely by hand, and Treixadura with Albariño gives a textured, orchard-fruited white.
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.
