This Week’s Wine:
2017 Fazenda Prádio ‘Tinto’
- Region: Ribeiras do Miño, Galicia
- DO: Ribeira Sacra (but not part of DO)
- Varietal: 100% Mencía
- How it’s Made: Fermented in tank with indigenous yeasts, aged in stainless
- Farming and Such: Organic. Low sulfur at bottling
Let’s Roll…
In August of 2016 I left my entire life behind and flew to Spain to work harvest. After a short stay in Barcelona, I landed in Santiago de Compostela, rented a car and headed to A Peroxa- the smallest town I’d been in since dad’s family reunion in Reemer, Minnesota. As I hit the last stretch of windy road in Pacio de Carracedo, the usual anxiety hit. What am I doing? Who do I think I am? Why am I like this? And then blam, Xavi popped seemingly straight out of a mencía vine (with no shirt on) and I the anxiety flew right out of me. We pruned some vines, ate some pulpo and three days later we were harvesting Mencía.
When the 2016 Fazenda Prádio Tinto finally landed at Bellota, I took a bottle directly to the office, poured myself a glass and breathed in every minute I spent on the river and every vine I touched in Pacio de Carracedo, A Peroxa. Terruño, bitches.
The 2017 Prádio Tinto is wildly different than the 2016. It’s straightforward and linear, with a level of focus not found in the 2016. Red fruit pops out the glass, some pomegranate and raspberry, but mostly flavors and aromas of those farmers market bing cherries after they’ve finally reached that deep, ruby color. Bright, lifted, high in acidity with balsamic and the granite graphite quality that comes from wines of the Miño. Soft tannin. I don’t even find mencía to be one of the great grapes of Ribeira Sacra and the 2017 Prádio Tinto is pretty AF. I’ve been to the winery 4 times and yes… I still guessed it wrong.
Galicia is on the Atlantic Ocean, directly above Portugal. It is wet and green, full of hillsides, rivers and green countryside. Galicia as a whole has 5 vastly different sub regions. My embarrassing blind tasting skills take us to the Ribeira Sacra subregion, an insanely beautiful place to be, aptly named for the number of ancient churches that line the river banks. Ribeira Sacra was granted DO (aka baller) status in 1996.
Although you’ll rarely see one on a label, Ribeira Sacra itself has 5 subzones, each with its own soil type and microclimate. Fazenda Prádio sits in Ribeiras do Miño, a subregion blessed with the lion’s share of cooler weather and rainfall. The climate here is more Atlantic than Continental, and gets a lot less sunshine than the steep terraces of the neighboring Amandi subone. Ribeiras do Miño is lush, green and a bitch of a place to grow organic wine. It is the largest wine growing region in Ribeira Sacra, and the least informed thing to be searched on the internet since the ‘Citizens for Trump’ Facebook page. Guess I better get to writing that book.
The Ribeira do Miño soils are mostly granite – hot, molten rock formed in middle earth containing a bunch of rad rocks and crystals that eventually cool and weather on the earth’s surface- leaving just the right amount of quartz and feldspar in the subsoil and a dope, decomposed sandy topsoil. The sandy topsoil allows for drainage, retains the heat from the granite underneath and provides sexy aromas and softer tannin.
Fazenda Prádio is in Pacio de Carracedo, a very small village in the small town of A Peroxa in the province of Ourense, Galicia. With the help of the homies Boris and Rubin, Xavi farms 5 hectares of vines, including Merenzao*, Brancellao, Caiño Longo, Espadeiro, Sousón, Mencía, Loureira y Dona Branca. He chooses not to be a part the DO, as he’s a shirtless anarchist who wants to make wine the way he wants. And I’ll take it. Vineyards are 500 meters in altitude facing south and south-east. Xavi farms organically and uses very little added sulfur. The Tinto is aged in stainless steel. For now, Prádio makes a number of mono varietal wines and one fortified wine. There may or may not be a cava type experiment happening in the basement. When I visited last September, Xavi was refurbishing the winery and converting the entire process of fermentation to granite, recreating winemaking the way of his great grandparents- something Xavi strives for more and more.
Tasting Notes from me and my friend, Kyle Quinn “Red fruit popping out of the glass, (carbonic?), cherries, soft tannin, balsamic, cherries, bright, soft finish raspberries and pencil lead. Granite.”
Really, Erin? I’ll never, ever blind taste this wine wrong again.
*The 2015 Prádio Merenzao is one of my all time favorite wines.
Blogged at: My condo, East Oakland & Bellota
Soundtrack: Willie Nelson ft Paula Nelson ‘Have you Ever Seen the Rain’
