2021 Algueira Finca Cortezada, Ribeira Sacra

The visually stunning Finca Cortezada vineyard was carved into a dizzyingly steep amphitheatre well over a century ago. When Fernando González Riveiro found this abandoned plot, it had been reclaimed by the mountain forest and he spent years painstakingly clearing the land and rebuilding the ancient terraces.

Located in the Ribeira del Sil sub-region, the vineyard’s walled terraces are between two and three meters high and are 200 metres long, planted to Albariño, Godello and Treixadura. These old vines are rooted in soils rich in gneiss, quartz and slate. Naturally, all the work carried out here is manual.

From a cool and late Atlantic-influenced vintage, the stellar 2021 blends 40% Godello, 40% Albariño and 20% Treixadura. The fruit is co-fermented with indigenous yeasts and aged for six months in stainless steel to preserve the pristine citrus fruit and minerality this site gifts. The resulting wine is worthy of its spectacular setting: textured and savoury with ripe citrus and salty lemon notes, a piercing grapefruit spine and a sea spray finish. If you’re going to pull the cork anytime soon, consider giving it an energetic decant and laying the table with crispy, porky treats. That said, we can see this aging for at least five years, developing more complexity and weight as the years go by.