It was not an easy decision, as there were other great wines in front of Mixtura 2019 such as Viñas del Cámbrico Rufete blanca 2019, La Galapana 2019, "Toneles del Patio" La Sorpresa, Clos Ancestral 2019 and San Román Garnacha 2019. Each nominee has a revealing point that makes it unique, but only one can win the award.
We present this new project, Mixtura, led by the Galician Gutier Seijo Otero, who was for years the technical director of Dominio do Bibei and therefore responsible for much of the great achievements of the Ribeira Sacra winery in recent years.
Mixtura is a project that was born in 2019 and is based on the search and recovery of historical vineyards and their native varieties along the Miño river basin. When we say along the river basin, we mean it in the broadest and most logical sense of the word, that is, without political restrictions, but rather soil and climate conditions, which means vineyards on the east and on the other side of Spain, in Portugal. The most interesting thing about this initiative is that it ignores political borders and focuses on natural barriers, which are the real defining factors of the limits of a production area. It is a daring project, not short of complexity, which shows us the way towards the delimitation of wine around tangible and real variables, the borders established by the landscape with its soil and climate.
Mixtura is in its own right a river wine, a wine that guides us downstream along the Miño and Sil rivers from its source in Bierzo and through the varieties that have acclimatised best at each point of the river, the mencía from Bierzo, the godello from Valdeorras, the mencía and brancellao from Ribeira Sacra, treixadura and caiño in Ribeiro and, of course, the albariño from the Rías Baixas. This is how they use the varieties best adapted to each terroir with the aim of drawing a painting of the terroir in all its amplitude, as if each grape contributed with a small stroke on the canvas, participating in the whole picture.
Mixtura 2019 is a wine made with treixadura and albariño from three different plots and exposed to different variables. The Treixadura comes exclusively from the Ribeiro area, harvested in different vineyards at altitudes of between 90 and 200 metres, with soils of sabrego (decomposed granite) and under the impact of a transitional climate with a Mediterranean character softened by the Atlantic influence.
Ribeiro Vineyard
Part of the Albariño comes from Condado del Tea, in the middle of the Rías Baixas growing area. It is a south-facing vineyard, located at an altitude of 400 metres, on sandy soils with decomposed granite and protected by an Atlantic climate that is noticeably warmer than in its neighbouring Salnés Valley.
Melgaço Vineyard
Finally, we head to Melgaço, a village where a sub-zone of the Portuguese Vinho Verde D.O. is located. From there the rest of the Albariño that makes up the wine is harvested, a grape from sandy soils with decomposed granite and influenced by a cool Atlantic climate.
The result is a surprising wine, with a nose that possesses intensity and character. It is rich in herbal and floral nuances that take us back to its origin, with ripe fruit and soft spicy and creamy oak notes from its fermentation in Austrian oak foudres. The finish is long, flavoursome and intense.
A total of 9,219 bottles of this wine have been produced and its retail price will be around €27.5. As it could not be otherwise, this wine is bottled as a Table Wine.
The cornerstone of this project is not to make representative albariño, treixadura or caiño wines but, as Gutier says, "to make wines of greater entity". According to its creator, this is a project that wants to be above people, "it is a project for a region that I wouldn't like to be tied to a name", words that reveal a solid project with great vital energy. The wines are made in a renovated 1950s winery built by stonemasons and which has all the tools that, in the opinion of its creator, help to transfer the identity of the place to the wine, such as the Austrian foudres for fermentation and ageing or the concrete tanks for ageing, ageing understood as a process of stabilisation, not as an input, a way of stabilising the wine so that it will last a long time.
Mixtura 2019 opens a new line of work for all those who seek to focus on the environment and forget the political barriers already imposed, a way of working freely and without ties of any kind.
We love to see how new ways of understanding wine flourish and how each of them opens up new paths of action. We will follow closely all that this winery has to show us in the future. For the time being, it is in its own right, the Revelation Wine of the Peñín Guide 2022.
Our next nominee comes from the Torres Family, whose fate in the history of Spanish wine has always been marked by some significant event.
Our first nominee for revelation wine is the new project of the Cámbrico winery, a white rufete wine with an extraordinary structure and strength.
Excitement and hope in the Marco de Jerez region over the creation of a new designation of origin for traditional wines, seeking to attract young consumers with a sustainable and quality approach, projected for Europe in 2025.
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