2020 Zarate Tras da Viña Single Vineyard Albariño, Galicia

The 2020 Tras da Viña was bottled later, so I didn't taste it the last time I tasted Rías Baixas; so, this is the oldest of the whites I tasted today. The wine displays a golden color and a developed nose with notes of honey and caramel, like it's aging quite fast. This has notes of chamomile and dry flowers and a very tasty palate with a much more oxidative character with some smoky hints, but the palate feels fresher than the nose. I'd drink this sooner rather than later. This went through malolactic. 3,600 bottles. It was bottled in June 2022.

93 points Luis Gutierrez robertparker.com Nov 2023 Drink 2022-2025

Lemon is filled with mint and other green herbs give the wine an electric tingle. The wine has a quiet and determined line, grassy and delicate it’s savoury and really classily textural. Excellent weight, breadth and great poise.

Bottled separately since 2004 vintage. ‘Tras da Vinya’ is a grafted single vineyard of just 0.6 hectares facing south. The vineyard was planted in 1970 with cuttings from the el Palomar vineyard, but on rootstocks and has deeper, richer soil than Balado and Palomar. This wine has a very high malic content due to its sandy soil, is made in stainless steel by spontaneous fermentation. The wine is racked immediately following fermentation (4 months unsulphured on gross lees), then spends 24 months (more in cold, wet years perhaps) on fine lees, unstirred in tank, with no MLF.