Guímaro "Camiño Real" Tinto, Galicia, Spain 2023

FROM JOSE PASTOR:

THE WINE: Mostly Mencía with small amounts (~20%) of other traditional local varieties like Brancellao, Caiño, Marenzao, etc. From a mix of old vines from vineyards around the old “Camiño Real,” a horse path that runs across the steep slope at Amandi. All of the vineyards for this wine are older, planted on the classic Ribeira Sacra Losa slate, and on steep slopes.

THE PRODUCER: Pedro Rodríguez of Adegas Guímaro descends from a long line of winegrowers working in the Amandi area, Ribeira Sacra’s most prime subzone of perilously steep south facing vineyards planted on local Losa slate, just above the river Sil. The previous generation, his parents Manolo and Carmen, still work with him in the vines. They named their winery Guímaro (meaning “rebel” in Gallego) when they established it in 1991.In the past, Pedro’s family had produced small quantities of wine for their own consumption and sold their wine in garrafones - 20-liter glass containers - to local cantinas. In the early 1990s, they began to bottle their wines, and Guímaro was one of the first adegas to join the Ribeira Sacra appellation when it was founded in 1996. Like other traditional winemaking regions of inland Galicia, the area was in steep decline until the early 1990s. Pedro’s winemaking has been and is resolutely traditional: for the single vineyard wines, they employ wild yeast fermentation, foot treading in open-top vessels, stem inclusion, low sulfur additions, and fermentation and aging in used foudre.