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.

The As Xaras is a varietal mencía from Val do Bibei produced from a number of different vineyards at 600 meters on granite and schist soils. It ferments full clusters and ages in old 500 liter used French oak barrels for eight months. The wine is all cranberry and stone with a coolness running through its middle and a column of violets everything swings around.

This wine is a pre-arrival, with estimated arrival end of March