Winemaker Notes
Complex aromas of salinity exotic fruits with wet earth/herbal tones. The palate is textured with excellent acidity.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Produced as an exercise of blending, the 2017 Albariño is a blend from the majority of plots they work, mixing different soils, different ages of vines and different pruning methods. This feels like a powerful vintage, with great concentration and some complexity even for such a young wine. There are floral and citrus notes and a sapid, salty-like sensation on the palate. It feels like a very complete and balanced year, with all that it takes to develop nicely in bottle. All of their wines are bottled without malolactic. 90,000 bottles produced. This is normally bottled in ten lots and the wine kept with the lees. I tasted a bottle from August 2017.Rating: 92+
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Wine & Spirits
Spicy and fresh for a three-year-old albariño, this starts with a green apple scent and some leesy reduction. Give it time in a decanter and the white pepper spice adds saline notes, and the generous, pale apple flavors begin to open into a smooth, generous white with racy intensity. For freshly shucked littleneck clams.
Bright and aromatic with distinctive floral and fruity characteristics, Albariño has enjoyed a surge in popularity and an increase in plantings over the last couple of decades. Thick skins allow it to withstand the humid conditions of its homeland, Rías Baixas, Spain, free of malady, and produce a weighty but fresh white. Somm Secret—Albariño claims dual citizenship in Spain and Portugal. Under the name Alvarinho, it thrives in Portugal’s northwestern Vinho Verde region, which predictably, borders part of Spain’s Rías Baixas.
Named after the rías, or estuarine inlets, that flow as far as 20 miles inland, Rías Baixas is an Atlantic coastal region with a cool and wet maritime climate. The entire region claims soil based on granite bedrock, but the inlets create five subregions of slightly different growing environments for its prized white grape, Albariño.
Val do Salnés on the west coast is said to be the birthplace of Albariño; it is the coolest and wettest of all of the regions. Having been named as the original subregion, today it has the most area under vine and largest number of wineries.
Ribeira do Ulla in the north and inland along the Ulla River is the newest to be included. It is actually the birthplace of the Padrón pepper!
Soutomaior is the smallest region and is tucked up in the hills at the end of the inlet called Ria de Vigo. Its soils are light and sandy over granite.
O Rosal and Condado do Tea are the farthest south in Rías Baixas and their vineyards actually cover the northern slopes of the Miño River, facing the Vinho Verde region in Portugal on its southern bank.
Albariño gives this region its fame and covers 90% of the area under vine. Caiño blanco, Treixadura and Loureira as well as occasionally Torrontés and Godello are permitted in small amounts in blends with Albariño. Red grapes are not very popular but Mencía, Espadeiro and Caiño Tinto are permitted and grown.