Arnold Waldstein's Blog

There is a quiet revolution of young winemakers in obscure corners of the earth, in impossible terrain, making palate enlightening wine in new ways with ancient and natural methods. Louis Rodriguez is one of them.

Louis Rodriguez is a 35-year old winemaker from Ribeiro Sacra in Galicia in the very northwestern corner of Spain. He moved back to Ribeiro to reclaim his family’s ancestral vineyard. He is making wine naturally from indigenous grapes I’ve never heard of that taste everyday fresh, beautifully savory, exotically unfamiliar yet easy to drink.

This wildly obscure place is impossibly hostile to agriculture. It is almost completely vertical in deep gorges over the River Sil, with scorching heat during the day and cold nights. They harvest by hand because the land is too steep for machines. These terraces were originally cut by the Romans some 2000 years ago to supply wine for their armies marching to the Atlantic. Quite a place.

A Torna Dos Pasa Tinto is a blend of three indigenous grapes, Caiño Tinto, Ferrol, Brancellão. I was expecting something typically Spanish, like a great Mencia, I found something foreign, organic but incredibly well structured with layered tannins and a finish that lingered and evolved for a surprisingly long time.

This is a great bottle of wine. It inspired me to buy more and try it over time. It keeps delivering on its promise.

At $36 a bottle, it is a reasonable price for an exceptional wine.

Chambers Street Wines, always the champion of the small, the unknown, the impossible to find, the organic, the reasonable and the incredible has some in stock as of this post.