Hola, Albamar
Time to say a vinous hello to a bright Spanish white. Yes, the land of big, graceful red wines does spring the delightful surprise with the exuberant Albarino and we’ve just landed an Albarino style, vinified by a cult modern winemaker. Enjoy!
Hola, Bodegas Albamar
Bodegas Albamar is a small batch family winery set in the Rías Baixas region in north western Spain owned by the Alba family and is sought after for making the region’s cherished Albariño wines. While the Alba family has owned 2.5 hectares of vineyard rooted in sand and clay since 1984, the present generation winemaker Xurxo Alba who became the estate’s winemaker in 2006, elevated the estate from bulk wine to high-quality still wines with a focus on terroir driven Albarino. In recent times Xurxo Alba has become one of the flagbearers of the “New Spain” movement — small, artisanal producers redefining the country’s wines through precision, balance, and place.
Alba is a regional cult figure, having honed and mastered the art of making cool expressions that radiate with Atlantic influence and vibrant fruit. The estate and vineyard are situated in the O Salnés sub-region where the Umia river spills into the Atlantic ocean and enjoy cool, wet, maritime climate and sandy, granite-rich soils, which impart a signature saline minerality to the wines. Alba is a strong believer in organic and sustainable practices, including using native yeasts for fermentation. The winemaker ages the wines on fine lees in order to impart complexity and texture. The estate’s distinct Albarino style shines with vibrant acidity and marine characteristics.
Rias Baixas Rules
Billed as Galicia’s if not one of Spain’s most illustrious Denominación de Origen (DO), thriving up the county’s northwest. Rias Baixas is inseparably synonymous with Albarino. This indigenous and vivacious white grape is literally an outperforming outlier, given Spain’s dominant red wines from Rioja, Tudela Del Duero and Priorat. The region is blessed with the vinous trifecta of good rains, oceanic influence and granite soils that bring it together in a world class Albarino. Rias Baixas enjoys a cool maritime climate as it borders the Atlantic ocean which nurtures and cools the vines, imparting the fruit with hallmark traces of salinity while the granite soils yield fruit with citrusy character and plentiful acidity. Rias Baixas was anointed as a DO as recently as 1988 and in the past 37 years has risen to status of Spain’s standard bearer for white wines and the undeniable home of the sprightly Albarino.
