Standing in Ribeira Sacra is to feel the lofted potential radiating from the vines stacked steeply in Roman terraces dizzyingly above and below you. Something about the imposing aspect of the landscape makes you feel that the wines coming from it couldn’t help but be as great as the surrounds.
Ribeira Sacra occupies a temperate zone between the rainy Atlantic coast and Spain’s hot, dry interior which results in a long growing and ripening period. Fedellos was founded in 2011 by Curro Barreño and Jesús Olivares. It embodies many of the most important aspects of the New Spanish Wine movement: local varietals farmed with tremendous attention to the vineyard sites, resulting in wines of deftness and nuance that are pleasures to drink.
Fedellos focuses on the Val do Bibei and the Val do Sil. This is a remote part of Galicia—a narrow and forested steep valley that harkens as a former picture of the region before many of the valleys were dammed. They farm vineyards that were carved into the hillsides in centuries past. The vineyards are planted with old vines of intermixed white and red varietals and co-fermented with indigenous yeasts in their ancient cellar cut into the stone in Seadur. The winemaking at Fedellos is minimalist. They utilize long and gentle macerations in concrete followed by aging in neutral French oak barrels, foudres, and concrete tanks.
Bastarda, known more commonly as trousseau in the Jura from which it comes, has proven ideal to the Ribeira Sacra. In the Jura, the grape often has a difficult time coming to full ripeness but in the Ribeira Sacra, the climate has proven perfect. There are a small number of other varietals planted in the fields of Bastardo that are co-fermented with the wine though the winemakers themselves aren’t even sure of the portions.
It has cool bunches of red berries, mint and fennel, and piles of Moroccan spices. The tannins are fine and the grain all flows the same way. The wine leaves you with a feeling of a cool breeze coming down the mountains. Noted as one of the better examples of this cuvée to date.
