Ribeira Sacra is an adventure in terroir…varied and unique and surprising from one hillside to another.
This northwestern corner of Spain is a landscape of remote extremes. Too steep for modern machinery and too harsh for modern varietals, it has been abandoned for generations but unchanged since the Romans terraced and planted it some 2000 years ago to make wines for their armies marching to the sea.
Today, a new generation of winemakers have taken over tending the hillsides and cliffs and are making remarkable wine, as individual and spectacular as the landscape itself.
The Dominio do Bibei vineyard is my first experience with the Quiroga-Bibei subregion, the most southern of the five wine growing regions in Ribeira Sacra. The Bibei hillsides are impossibly steep, from 55 to 100% grades, arid and hot and challenging to farm. The earth is clay and slate and rock hard and a microclimate considerably different from the other areas of Ribeira Sacra. Many, if not most of the ancient vineyards here were abandoned for a generation or more.
Javier Dominguez, armed with vision, patience and funding, is the force behind the Dominio do Bibei vineyard. With his wife, he set out to rebuild an ancient vineyard on this mountain side in the Bibei Valley that had been deserted for a decade but had scattered plantings of ancient vines, many of them over 100 years old.
Dominguez wanted to create wine that spoke of the hillside and valley he built his vineyard on. His approach to discovering terroir was to interfere with the vines to the most minimal amount possible. Everything in the winery is done naturally with gravity fed processes, natural yeasts, and fermentation in carved stone or cement ‘foudres’ or tanks. He was looking for a subtler, mineral taste from the Mencia grape that let the fruit sink to the background and the mineral and acidity carry the lighter tannin flavors.
Congratulations Javier….this is a great bottle of wine. An aficionado’s dream!
The Lalama ’06 Ribiera Sacra is a blend of 85% Mencia and equal parts of Garnacha, Brancellao, and Mouraton made from a mixture of vines as young as 15 years and as old as 100. This is a traditional blend for Ribiera Sacra but Javier added one modern touch, fermenting the grapes separately then blending them all together. In the past, the vines were grown and harvested and fermented together.
This Mencia blend is spicy and light, remarkably medium bodied, savory with a gentle balance between the spice and citrus. Even with a high alcohol content, it tastes fresh and aerated and ready to drink.
This bottle is quite luscious…weightless and aromatic and fulfilling. Really a great wine with food and cheese. Certain to surprise and satisfy at any dinner party.
Available at $36 a bottle from Chambers Street Wines in TriBeCa NYC and online wine merchants.
Check out posts on other wines from Ribeira Sacra here and here and here.
