Appellation: none
Cuvée: Viñas Vellas
Colour: White
Grapes: Albariño
About: the label represents the very old vines of the name and the staves of the old chestnut 500L barrel the wine is fermented and aged in. One of the most intense, rich and pure wines in the range – the chestnut is large part of that. Very limited.
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. Whole bunches are crushed and pressed direct to ferment in chestnut barrels, over 20 years old, where the wine remains after fermentation until bottling 8 or 9 months later. 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: 500
Alcohol %: 12
SO2 Total: < 20
Tasting: 2022-07-28 fabulously cool wine, seems low acid but has tons of freshness, spicy and peppery with mineral, vegetal, oily, complex aromas. Medium body plus a bit.