Guímaro "Tinto" Ribeira Sacra, Galicia, Spain 2023

FROM JOSE PASTOR:

THE WINE: 100% mencía from many plots of vines around Ribeira Sacra with an average age of 40 years old. The soils are slate, granite, and sand and the wine is fermented and raised in stainless steel tank.

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.