Galicia: The Little Spanish Grape That Could
By ERIC ASIMOV
It’s impossible to tackle the subject of Spanish wines without recognizing their remarkable ascent in the last 30 years. The trajectory of Spanish white wines has been especially steep and fascinating.
Back in the dark ages of the early 1980s, the notion of seeking out a Spanish white would never have occurred to most people. Spain, like Italy, was known for reds. Sherry might have come to mind, an indicator of the barren selection. Not that Spain wasn’t making any white wines; if you ever have a chance to try R. López de Heredia’s 1981 Viña Tondonia Blanco, a gran reserva white Rioja, you are in for a remarkable treat. It’s gorgeously waxy, rich and deep, and you can still find bottles in retail shops, though it might cost you $150 or so. But what other 30-year-old wine in peak condition would cost less?
Aside from R. López de Heredia, which perhaps alone continues to make white Riojas in the classic style, those wines are largely a thing of the past. Yet Spain is a trove of modern whites now, made from distinctive Spanish grapes like godello, verdejo, treixadura and, of course, albariño.
If the first three grapes haven’t yet gained traction in the United States, albariño has become as much a brand name for Spanish whites as pinot grigio has for Italian. It’s testimony to its consistent popularity that people in restaurants, and not just in Spanish places, ask for albariño without being aware of producers or even that it comes largely from Rías Baixas, on the Atlantic coast of Galicia.
“They are quite familiar with albariño but very little with the others,” said Gil Avital, the wine director at Tertulia in Greenwich Village, who recently joined Florence Fabricant; Barbara Wong, the wine director at Crown on the Upper East Side; and me for a tasting of 20 albariños.
The wines came almost entirely from the 2011 vintage, with a few 2010s in the mix as well, and it’s not hard to see why they are popular. By and large, they were consistently pleasant, refreshing wines, resolutely dry, relentlessly citrus-flavored and, with the exception of our favorites, abidingly uniform.
“They showcase the one issue that Spain struggles with, identifying special sites,” Gil said. I wouldn’t agree entirely. First, you can pretty much make this case anywhere outside Burgundy and the Mosel. Second, the albariño industry is young enough that the region may still be in the process of discovering where and how the grape does best. In addition, growers may have identified special sites, even if winemakers do not take advantage of them, instead blending together grapes from multiple sites.
But Gil does have a point. Though Rías Baixas has five subzones, they are not familiar even to avid albariño fans and rarely displayed on labels, which might promote greater familiarity. Nor do many of the wines suggest that exploring distinctive terroirs is of interest to the producers.
Yet if the wines fit into the category of crowd pleasers — Barbara described the group as “patio pounders,” harmless dry whites for catering to entry-level drinkers — the occasional jolt of dimension that we enjoyed in our favorites also indicated that some producers are beginning to explore the greater possibilities of albariño.
Those wines had an invigorating tanginess and discernable minerality that resonated with us all, and the flavors had staying power.
Once in Spain I drank a lovely 30-year-old example of a single-vineyard albariño, so I can attest to the wine’s potential. Here at home, I’ve had beautiful older examples of my favorite bottling, the Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas — Cepas Vellas is Galician for old vines — which is said to come from a vineyard 200 years old. The 2011 Cepas Vellas in our tasting was our No. 3 bottle, though it divided our panel. Gil and Florence did not care for it, but Barbara and I loved it, and I think of it as a wonderful, age-worthy example of the complexity that albariño can achieve. The ordinary Do Ferreiro, which wasn’t in our tasting, is also a pretty good bottle, by the way.
Our overall favorites, the 2011 Leirana from Forja del Salnés and the 2011 Etiqueta Ámbar from Granbazán, were also clearly a step above the others. The Leirana had deep, true mineral and fruit flavors that resounded long after the sip was gone, while the Ámbar was aromatic, steely and complex. It was also our best value at $22.
The No. 4 wine, the 2011 Igrexario de Saiar from Benito Santos, fresh, enticing and just $17, not only gave the Ámbar a run as best value, it most definitely showed an effort to display a distinctive terroir. In fact, Benito Santos, now run by an American, Todd Blomberg, bottles three single-vineyard albariños. The Igrexario di Saiar is the entry-level of the three, and possibly the least distinctive, but delicious nonetheless. I would urge seeking out the other wines as well.
All of the bottles in our tasting were 100 percent albariño except for the No. 8, 2011 O Rosal from Terras Gauda. This tangy, straightforward wine, made from grapes from the O Rosal Valley, is 70 percent albariño, with a combination of two obscure local grapes, loureira and caíño blanco, making up the rest. The rules in Rías Baixas require a wine to be all albariño to use the term on the label, so this one goes without.
While we enjoyed all of the wines on our list, Gil was correct in suggesting that many albariño producers could aim higher. The top producers show the grape’s potential, and the land itself, with sandy, granitic soils, sometimes permits growers to plant vines on their own roots because phylloxera, the ravenous root-eating aphid that devastated European vineyards a century ago, does not thrive in sandy soils. It’s one of a few, scattered sites around the world, including Chile, eastern Washington and Colares, a small region northwest of Lisbon on the Atlantic coast, where vines of European origin do not have to be grafted onto American rootstocks, which resist phylloxera.
What does it mean not to have to graft vines? That’s hard to say, although it certainly appeals to the romantic who wants to imagine the relationship of grape to earth unmediated by potential interruptions like grafts. This ability to express the characteristics of a distinctive site is a significant part of what makes wine great. Most albariños don’t show this quality, and settle for pleasant thirst quenching. But the top wines show enough potential for me, at least, to wish for more.
