Exploring Guímaro and Ribeira Sacra

The inhabitants of the tiny village of Sober — all nine of them if the latest census reports are correct — must count themselves as lucky souls. That is assuming that young wine grower Pedro Rodríguez Pérez shares some of his tiny production of Ribeira Sacra with his neighbors.

Sober is located in the Amandi sub-zone of Ribeira Sacra, a D.O. area of modest proportion located in Galicia, not far from the northern border of Portugal in the northwest corner of Spain. Here, the 35-year-old Rodríguez has no choice but to farm his seven hectares of vineyards completely by hand, as those vines are perched on precipitous slopes above the River Sil.

Pedro Rodríguez Pérez overlooks his vines in Ribeira Sacra (photo courtesy of Triage Wines, Guimaro's distributor in the Pacific Northwest).

Pedro works fifteen separate vineyard plots, planted primarily to Mencia, along with small quantities of Caino tinto and other native black grape varieties, plus small parcels of Godello and Treixadura, from which he produces a single white wine. His vines average 40-years in age. There are three reds in his cadre, all of which, along with the one white, are bottled under his label Guímaro (which means "nonconformist").

Aside from Pedro's inclusion in Eric Asimov's excellent New York Times profile of Ribeira Sacra and other random tidbits around the Web, there's surprisingly little information available about the wines of Señor Rodriguez. So, ever in search of knowledge, I contacted Guímaro's importer, Jose Pastor, who shared with me the following details. (I've edited Jose's words for context and style but will still attribute them as a quote, as I would not have had access to such information without his help.) Says Jose,

"As far as I know Pedro makes four diferent cuvées:

• A barrel fermented white, mainly from Godello, naturally fermented with some batonage, bottled on the early side with no filtration. He makes 2 barrels every year.
• Then he does a basic red cuvée, fermented/aged in tank and also bottled on the early side, which goes by the name of Guimaro Joven (which means "young"). Since '08, this comes in a Burgundy bottle. (The '07 and some early bottles of the '08 were shipped in a Bordeaux bottle with a blue label, which may have caused some confusion out there; this is the same cuvée.) Starting in 2009, the Joven is going to be raised half in foudre and the other half in tank. Also, a small part of the cuvée will be whole-cluster fermented.

Lastly he produces two old vine cuvées:

• 'B1P' is made from old vine Mencia grown in Pedro's highest elevation vineyard; this one is fermented in open-top foudres with whole clusters.
• 'B2M' is also old vine Mencia but from a lower elevation plot. It is 100% de-stemmed, fermented in tank and then raised in used barrels.

Pedro told me that in 2009 both of these cuvées will be whole-cluster fermented as he likes how the B1P is developing. Current releases for the old vine cuvées are '07 and, as far as I know, are only available in California."

Given that only only 25 cases of "B1P" make it into the US, I was lucky to have started out my experiences with Guímaro right at the top of the range while in San Francisco last fall. More recently, I've had the chance to go back to step one.

Ribeira Sacra Summum, Guímaro (Pedro M. Rodríguez Pérez) 2008
$15. 13.5% alcohol. Diam. Importer: Jose Pastor Selections (Vinos & Gourmet), Richmond, CA.

This is the "Joven" bottling referred to by Jose in the technical notes above. The word "Amandi," which appeared on the front label of the old Bordeaux-shaped bottles but now appears only on the bottle's rear label, is a reference to the wine's place of origin. "Summum," in turn, is the highest designation for Ribeira Sacra; red wines thus labeled contain a minimum of 85 per cent preferred red varieties, 60 per cent of which must be Mencía. Summum wines can be labeled varietally (which Guimaro's is, as Mencia, again solely on the rear label) only if the wine contains 85% or more of that variety.

Enough with the regulatory stuff... The wine leads off with a fresh, very lively nose of blueberry, black cherry and wild plum fruit, spiced up with whiffs of bay leaves and tobacco. Very coolly textured, round and smooth in the mouth, with a fine acid/tannin balance and a distinctly mineral finish. It's both firm and taut yet not at all hard. And it cries out for food. I paired it with a pasta dressed with a sauce of crushed tomatoes, a pinch of coarsely chopped garlic and a small tin of anchovies, all of which I sauteed in a little olive oil. I don't think that's an even remotely Galician dish but it was a pretty freakin' delicious combo, nonetheless. Riding solidly into day two, there was still plenty of bright red fruit, a slight leaning-out in the textural department, and the emergence of enticing aromas of cured meat and salami spices.

On the surface, this is juicy, pleasurable, hard-not-to-drink-the-whole-bottle vino, but there's the kind of meaningful substance to it — structure, length and penetrating flavors, a real sense of individuality — that delivers far beyond the overwhelming majority of wines at its $15 price point.

Addendum: Caught up in the rigor of writing, I nearly forgot to add that today's post also provides the answer-in-full to last weekend's episode of Name That Wine.

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Ribeira Sacra "Alodio"

There was a time in my life, in my earlier days of wine exploration, when I drank Spanish wine much more often than I do at present. Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Bierzo, Albarino and wines of any number of other regions, vines or styles were just as likely to grace my table as were the wines of France, Northern Italy and Germany that more typically find their way home with me now. I think that's a fairly typical pattern in the evolution of the exploration of any field, whether it be art, music, science or, in this case, wine. Fields narrow, focus intensifies. The urge to dig deep overcomes the tendency to dabble on a more piecemeal basis. Once those roots have grown, though, the desire to venture outward returns. And the country that most often calls me back, much more so than Australia or the US, is Spain.

But where to start? I've definitely fallen into the same trap as others, where Spanish wine begins and ends with R. Lopez de Heredia, along with the occasional dalliance with Sherry. Aside from that, too much of what I have drunk over the last decade has been either dried out and bereft of expression or pumped up into something jammy and homogeneous. Recently, however, I've made some intriguing initial excursions into Ribeira Sacra, a tiny, hilly, cool climate area of Galicia that's been receiving loads of attention of late from wine writers such as Eric Asimov and Gerry Dawes. I enjoyed an eye-opening bottle of Guimaro's Ribeira Sacra "B1P" at NOPA in San Francisco earlier this fall and more recently checked in with the following, a recommendation from both Old School Joe and the Spanish wine buyer at NYC's Chambers Street Wines.


Ribeira Sacra Summum "Alodio" Mencía, Enológica Témera (Bodegas Costoya) 2008
$15. 13% alcohol. Diam. Importer: A José Pastor Selection, Vinos & Gourmet, Richmond, CA.
Enológica Témera is a small estate, with five hectares of vines and an annual production of about 4,000 cases, located in the Riberas do Sil subregion of Ribeira Sacra. Winemaker Carlos Costoya's entry-level red, this cuvée of "Alodio" is a varietal expression of the local vine Mencía. (There's a white version as well, made from Godello.) Though this is true Mencía, rather than the Galician strain of Cabernet Franc that is also rather confusingly known as Mencía, there's nonetheless a familial resemblance here to cool climate Cab Franc.

Medium purplish-red in the glass, it leads with simple, direct aromas of fresh red fruit – cherries and cassis, mostly – and finishes with a very soft, round texture marked by refreshing acidity. It reminds me, as hinted at above, of a fruity, bistro-style Chinon crossed with the warmer scents of a clean, medium-bodied Côtes du Rhône. After a half-hour in the glass, its aromas reach a higher tone, giving scents of blueberry skin and violets. From there, the wine remains very consistent, practically unchanged in fact, into its second day, moving just ever so slightly into the tarter end of the red fruit spectrum.

If I've a complaint, it's that the wine seems overly polished, its edges removed to the point that its texture is slightly glossy. The lack of any overt winemaking signatures, however, lead me to think that this soft simplicity is most likely the product of young vine fruit, fruit that hasn't yet reached a deeper expression. I'll look forward to seeing where it leads in future vintages. And in the meanwhile – this is a reasonably good value at $15 or less per bottle – I'd hardly say no to "Alodio" as an added option in my ever developing rotation of no-nonsense, every day wines.

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