Appellation: none
Cuvée: Sauvage
Colour: White
Grapes: Albariño
About: the name of course means wild and refers to the setting of the vineyard, not the style of the wine. Several owls live in the vineyard and remind the Sotelo family whenever they’re there of the connection with the wild. Orange is used predominantly again because it’s an Orange wine.
Vines
Location: from near the cellar
Size: < 1 ha
Age: planted in 1970’s
Soils: granite
Exposition: north facing
Altitude: between 20-40m
Training: all the vines are planted on pergola trellising lifting it off the floor to avoid damp and to increase ventilation.
Farming philosophy: basically organic, with natural treatments, as little as possible conventional organic (sulfur, copper).
Average yield hl/ha: 45
Climate: humid, Atlantic, but benefitting from sea breezes, cool but increasingly warm in winter and hot in summer.
Winemaking
The harvest is carried out into small buckets of 10 to 15 litres and then transported within 30 minutes to an hour to the cellar, there’s no analysis of the grapes just tasting and looking at the juice. The fruit is left whole, crushed and put into plastic tank to ferment, where it is foot trodden daily during fermentation, after which it’s pressed and racked to age in amphora for 8 or 9 months until bottling. There is nothing added or taken, no sulfites at any stage. The malo happens naturally. The wine is bottled unfined, unfiltered usually in a small window of opportunity in the summer when the wine has fallen clear.
Vintage Notes 2021
Another difficult up and down year. A wet warm winter, which didn’t allow the sap to rest sufficiently, was followed by a wet spring with up and down temperatures that favoured mildew. There followed a hot and dry June, a moderate July, then a hot and dry August that ended with significant rains at the end and into September.
Date bottled: 2022-07
Bottles produced: 1000
Alcohol %: 12
SO2 Total: < 20
Tasting: 2022-07-28 very “orange” but keeps great acidity and sense of terroir, with saline acidity and lemon, orange, apple, spice fruit. Medium body, fat, viscous and astringent, another great fun wine.