0:01

No , are you ready for this ?

0:02

I'm ready . Benvidos

0:04

oh , porron cast .

0:08

A Gallego opener Great

0:10

.

0:11

You want to hear a Galician tongue twister ?

0:13

Sure .

0:14

Let's do this Se boa boa , numbo boa

0:16

, se numbo boa boa , numbo numbo .

0:19

Okay , what'd you just call

0:21

me ? Yeah , perfect , get

0:26

ready for some Galicia . Noah

0:33

Chachester on

0:35

the show today to talk about Galicia . How

0:37

you doing , man . I'm doing good , so

0:40

you're just off the boat . What was it like

0:42

? You lived in Galicia for

0:44

years . How'd you get to

0:46

Galicia ?

0:48

I got to Galicia by getting lucky

0:50

. Basically I was out of college

0:52

and I didn't know what to do with myself . So

0:54

I found this program and said , all right , well

0:57

, you've got a warm body , you're a beating heart and

0:59

you're a native English speaker , you can come to Spain . So

1:01

I said , well , that sounds great . And

1:03

I applied . And when you , this

1:05

is a Spanish government program so you can

1:07

apply and you can go to a different autonomous

1:09

community , like you know , on the Lusia , the Basque

1:12

country , galicia , whatever . So I'm from

1:14

Northern New York , new

1:16

Siberia , I like to call it , and it was very

1:18

cold , very snowy . So

1:20

I said I can't go to Southern Spain , I can't be in the

1:23

sun , I'm going to melt . So I said , oh , I

1:25

have to go somewhere in the north . It looks green

1:27

, it's cool , I'll pick Galicia . And

1:30

then I think the process after that is there's some kind

1:32

of you know civil servant

1:34

in a basement in Madrid with their you

1:36

know eyes blindfolded and they're throwing darts at

1:38

a map of Galicia . And they said , okay

1:40

, you'll go there . So I ended up in this city

1:42

called Acorunia , which is in

1:44

the north , it's on the northern coast . Most people

1:46

haven't heard of it . They might have heard of Santiago . The Camino

1:49

goes to Santiago , but Carunia is a little bit

1:51

off the beaten path .

1:53

Yeah , that sounds really cool .

1:55

I mean of all the places to

1:57

end up .

1:58

I've had a very

2:00

, very great relationship with the Galicia

2:02

from the moment I laid eyes on it . I can

2:04

remember the trip like it was yesterday the

2:06

seafood , the people , the

2:09

way the land looks , the feel

2:11

of it . There's a very old

2:13

element to Galicia and

2:16

there's a very fresh element to Galicia

2:18

and I think that that is sometimes lost

2:21

in the wine conversation in particular . We

2:24

kind of have a basic understanding of

2:26

where Galicia is , what

2:28

it means for the wine world

2:30

. And I'd like

2:32

to go further , because you're

2:34

just there and you're very deeply

2:37

involved in a lot

2:39

of the wineries you visited , you know

2:41

a lot of people , you know the Terroirs and

2:44

I think that it'd be interesting to kind of dive

2:46

a little deeper . So I was thinking

2:49

what's great about Galicia ?

2:51

What's great about Galicia ? That's a . So

2:54

I'm going to dive into this with the

2:56

answer . The absolute thing that you need to know to understand

2:59

Galicia is the Galician character

3:01

. So the Galician

3:03

would answer that question with it depends

3:06

. That's the . A

3:08

Galician will never give you a straight answer , and this is we're

3:10

delving a little bit into stereotype here , but it is true . Galicia

3:13

, it's not like the Spain

3:15

of stereotype . It's not like the

3:17

Spain that we imagine of sun , and sand

3:19

and going to the beach

3:21

and British people getting drunk

3:24

and German tourists and all of that

3:26

. That's a different part of Spain . This is Celtic

3:29

inspired Spain . It's green , there's

3:31

fog , there's all these brooding

3:33

sailors and bagpipes and

3:36

you come around the corner and there's just a cow staring

3:39

you in the face , things like that . So

3:41

this is green Spain , they call it . So what's

3:43

great about Galicia is

3:45

its ability to always surprise you

3:47

. There's always something that you don't

3:50

expect , and so , going back to the idea of

3:52

it depends . Galicia has been invaded

3:54

. It was always the last stop , sort

3:56

of , on the invasion train of Western

3:58

Europe . First it was the Romans who got there

4:00

. They colonized it and named it Galicia

4:03

for the Galicia , the people who were living

4:05

there , the sort of Celtic culture . And

4:08

then , when the Romans left , there

4:10

was this kingdom called the Swabians , who came in

4:12

, and then it was part of the kingdom

4:14

of Castilla in the medieval

4:16

period and it was part of Portugal

4:19

briefly , and then it was annexed into Spain . So

4:22

Galicians have this long history of always being dominated

4:24

by one power , one

4:26

strongman , one king , one whoever . So

4:29

they'll never give you a straight answer . It's a self-defense

4:32

mechanism . So if you go up to a Galician

4:34

and you say you ask them a yes or no

4:36

question , they'll say well , to answer

4:38

that I would have to tell you about this . Or

4:43

the typical joke people make is if you meet a Galician

4:45

on the landing of a staircase , they

4:48

won't be able to tell you whether they're going up or coming down . So

4:51

that's what's great about Galicia , is that there's

4:53

this potential right for surprises

4:56

that you never know what's coming . So

4:58

if we relate that to the wine world , nobody

5:01

30 years ago would have said

5:03

that Galicia is going to

5:05

be making some of the most interesting wines

5:08

of Spain . Really

5:10

, why is that ? I

5:12

guess we have to get into a lot of history

5:14

of it . Basically , to make a long story short

5:17

, it's always been a deeply

5:19

rural , deeply impoverished part

5:21

of Spain . So people always made wine

5:23

and it actually has a thousand year

5:25

wine making tradition , going back to the Romans

5:27

, going back to the monks it's sort of Burgundian

5:30

in that style , right . And the Benedictines

5:32

get there and they set up their monasteries and they set

5:34

up their land and they say , wow , this is amazing , we're

5:36

going to make amazing wine . But because

5:38

of the historical oppression

5:41

, we'll say , of Galicia , because of its out

5:43

of the wayness , it

5:45

sort of went into decline

5:47

after a while . I mean , there's a lot of parallels

5:49

to the history of Spain . You have emigration

5:52

. A lot of Galicians emigrated during the 19th

5:54

century and then during the dictatorship in the 20th

5:56

century . People left the countryside . They couldn't afford

5:58

to feed themselves , let alone make wine

6:01

, and so a lot of it fell into decline . The

6:03

Tawara is there , but the

6:05

people were not there . The people were not

6:08

willing to do it , to stay , and

6:10

so that's a great surprise They've

6:12

managed to sort of claw their way back from

6:14

extinction in the past

6:16

30 years .

6:17

That's fantastic . So I had a conversation

6:20

with Tomor Rodriguez of Remiri

6:22

and many properties all through

6:24

Spain now , who's very much an

6:27

ambassador for nearly forgotten

6:30

places in Spain , and

6:32

he was relating to me

6:34

that to find the great

6:36

vineyards in Galicia . A

6:38

lot of it is word of mouth For sure

6:40

. So there are things that maybe

6:43

are nearly extinct or

6:45

nearly completely forgotten and

6:48

they're right there in plain sight , and

6:50

you and I have had , I bet , similar experiences

6:52

. Here I was , I walked through a chestnut

6:55

grove . It's a terraced vineyard

6:57

that's been there for a very long time . It's

7:00

the Odiviso bottling of Lederis Luscio

7:02

. The light hits it . You look

7:04

across , you see a hermitage . I mean it's

7:07

incredible and

7:09

most people don't

7:11

even know about it . They know maybe in

7:14

the wine world we would just roll through the

7:16

Appalachians . People know Northwest Spain

7:18

and I think it's a really

7:20

for surprise . To

7:23

your point . I think there are a lot of surprises

7:25

coming from Galicia .

7:27

For sure . And the great thing about exposure

7:30

that we can give Galicia here in North

7:32

America we'll say in the States , in

7:34

the English-speaking world is that a lot

7:37

of people they only know Riaspaisias

7:39

, for example , or a lot of people they

7:41

know a couple of wines from rebate

7:43

or sacra . So with more

7:46

exposure , people can say , wow , there are

7:48

some really stellar wines coming out of here

7:50

. But it's that idea of understanding

7:52

. But I have an anecdote about

7:55

that . It's like Jumanji

7:57

over there , in the sense that

8:00

it rains

8:02

so much they get like a liter and

8:04

a half of rainwater a year

8:06

, which is saying something like 1,600

8:09

millimeters or whatever of or

8:11

not a liter and a half I don't know what I'm talking about , but 1,600

8:13

millimeters of rain . There's a lot of rain . So

8:16

the rain in Spain stays mainly in Galicia , not

8:18

on the plain that's a lie . So

8:20

it's extremely conducive to plant

8:22

life . So I was riding around

8:24

with a winemaker in Rebater , which

8:27

is arguably Galicia's oldest historical

8:29

wine region that's where the Benedictines arrived . They

8:31

started making wine since the

8:33

11th , 12th century and

8:36

he showed me a vineyard and he said this is really

8:39

sad . This man who cultivated

8:41

this vineyard his whole life . He passed away during

8:43

the pandemic . This is summer 2020

8:45

that we're riding around and you couldn't even see the

8:48

vines Like it was completely overgrown

8:50

by grasses

8:52

, trees , bushes , things

8:55

like that in two years , and so I'm

8:57

sure that there are a lot of historical vineyards

8:59

out there that , once they are abandoned , it's extremely

9:01

difficult to get them back .

9:04

That's definitely true . I was walking with a

9:06

winemaker and he was pointing

9:09

out Incredible

9:11

historic vineyard sites that

9:13

he'd heard from the old folks . They're

9:16

like these are the great vineyards in

9:18

Ribeiro and they were complete

9:20

is basically a forest , completely

9:22

overgrown , and there's like Roman

9:25

Edifices in there . I mean , it's crazy

9:27

old and you can tell that there's something

9:30

special going on them . That's . The other thing

9:32

is that I feel like there's an energy in Galicia

9:34

that is very different than

9:36

Any other place in Spain that I've

9:38

been to .

9:39

I , I chalk it up to the people like

9:41

to . You know , if you go to a fair they'll say these

9:44

like Celtic trinkets , and so people like to play

9:46

up the Celtic nests . It's not

9:48

necessarily , you know , they're not Celtic like

9:50

they are in Ireland or in the British

9:52

Isles . I mean , the people that were

9:54

originally there were Celtic

9:56

in the sense that they shared a culture

9:58

. There's even evidence that there was

10:01

some trade , like sea trade , between Ireland

10:03

, england and the northern coast

10:05

of Spain up the Bay of Biscay . But I

10:08

think that energy Really sort

10:10

of permeates this kind of other worldliness

10:12

. The stone , the earth

10:14

, the green grass , the sea , craggy

10:17

Atlantic cliffs , I Think

10:19

all of that sort of gives it this

10:21

otherworldly energy . And also , you

10:23

know , people are more open even to

10:25

the idea of magic . Culturally

10:28

it's something that it's

10:31

like . They get this glint in their eye , you know , when they're talking

10:33

about the , the Santa Compaña , which

10:35

is this procession of the dead that sometimes you can

10:37

see at night and you better be careful or else they'll take

10:39

you away . Or the megas , which are

10:41

, like you know , witches and things like that

10:43

. There's a lot of these supernatural

10:45

beliefs that sort of persist

10:47

to this day . Right , galicia

10:49

, I mean , spain is obviously a Catholic country . The

10:52

Camino de Santiago is , like you know , the

10:54

third holiest pilgrimage route

10:56

in the Catholic Church . The Apostle

10:58

Saint James is supposed to be buried in Santiago

11:00

de Compostela , right ? So I mean there's obviously

11:02

Catholicism there , but it

11:04

sort of coexists with this idea of paganism

11:07

and and magic in that sort of thing

11:09

, and so Nowadays I

11:12

don't think you'll find very many people who still

11:15

believe in the , the megas or the Santa Compaña

11:17

or whatever . But it's like culturally

11:19

it still permeates and so

11:21

it gives this sort of different energy

11:23

, this , this that we are in Galician

11:25

tell me about .

11:27

So you speak Gallego also . I do

11:29

which I'm sure is very useful . Did

11:34

that open doors for you ? Is

11:36

that , is that something culturally ? Because

11:38

I know that when I hear dialects in other places

11:41

or distinct languages , also within

11:43

countries , you start

11:45

going oh , if I spoke that I'd probably Understand

11:48

even more . For sure , did this open doors

11:50

for you ?

11:51

Oh , totally so . The other thing you need

11:53

to know to understand Galicia is

11:55

the existence of the Galician language

11:57

. So it is , linguistically speaking , it is its

11:59

own language . I think a lot of times people

12:01

are misinformed , and so you'll hear them call it a dialect

12:04

. Don't say that to a Galician . I

12:06

didn't say that .

12:06

No , you're right , no , no no , you didn't say that .

12:08

But you know , I've had conversations where people

12:10

say , oh , you speak the dialect over there and

12:12

I say it's a language . It's a language . No

12:15

, but I mean the Galician language

12:17

comes from Latin

12:19

. It's a romance language . It was originally Galego

12:22

Portuguese in the Middle Ages and

12:24

so it was sort of the same thing as Portuguese

12:26

and the two kind of separated and Then

12:29

it's been oppressed for a long

12:32

time . I mean , when Galicia became a part of Spain

12:34

, castilian Spanish , castellano

12:36

, they call it became the majority

12:39

language and Galician was still spoken , but

12:41

it was sort of associated with rural

12:43

life and poverty and that kind of thing

12:45

and it went through a little bit of a Renaissance

12:47

in the 19th century , but then that was put on hold

12:49

with the whole , you know , dictatorship for most

12:52

of the 20th century , and so now

12:54

it's really sad because it

12:56

is something that is just

12:59

so indicative of a culture having

13:01

your own language , not even words or

13:03

phrases or slang , but it's an entire language

13:06

. So I mean language is culture , just

13:08

like wine is culture , just like music

13:10

is culture , languages is culture

13:12

. So to understand the Galician people

13:14

you need to understand that there are . You

13:17

know , there is a Galician language , and

13:19

that explains a lot of the idiosyncrasies of the

13:21

people and their wine as well , like , for

13:24

example . The one of

13:26

the things that I love is that there's no

13:28

tradition , or I guess that you can say yes

13:30

, right , but there's the , the

13:33

, the most primordial form of speaking the

13:35

Galician language , which a lot of people don't do . But if

13:37

you really you go to someone who's a native Galician

13:39

speaker , like you , ask them a question

13:41

and they'll respond , instead of saying

13:43

yes , they'll respond like in

13:45

the affirmative form of the verb . So if you say like

13:47

, did you go to the market , they'll say I went , instead

13:51

of saying yes , you know . And so they have

13:53

this sort of way of talking around things

13:55

. And I think that that

13:58

extends into the wine as well , because

14:00

there's this instinctive understanding

14:02

of place . And

14:04

the other thing in in Galicia is that they

14:07

have this Layer of place names

14:09

that has to do with the Galician language as well . A

14:11

lot of the place names are in

14:14

Galician and

14:16

it's this practice of naming a thing

14:18

. And you know , without getting into semantics

14:20

and all of this philosophy of language and stuff , how

14:23

do we understand something ? We can best understand

14:25

something by giving it a name , right

14:27

? So if it's something . Oh , I'm just

14:30

gonna describe this , but I'm not really sure it's

14:32

. Oh , you know the thing about Bob the whatever . So

14:34

if you go to a vineyard , for example , like

14:37

Telmo has vineyards that are

14:39

named , but it extends a little beyond this

14:41

, and so in Galicia you have the

14:43

autonomous community of Galicia and then you have

14:45

four provinces within that and

14:48

then with each , within each province , you have what's called

14:50

a concello , which is like a township , and

14:52

then within each township you have a parochia

14:55

, like a parish , but there's

14:57

differences between , like the religious sense of

14:59

a parish and a civil parish . So

15:01

it's a civil , it's

15:03

a way of you know , like Denominating

15:05

an area , and then within each parish

15:08

, if we peel back the onion even more , you

15:10

have things that are called lugares , like

15:12

literally a place . Mm-hmm and

15:15

lugares can be like the church

15:17

, aegrecia or outeiro

15:19

the hill . You know , in all of Galicia

15:21

there's like 360 different lugares

15:24

called the church , so

15:26

it can be very confusing for your good man's yeah

15:29

, but the idea is , because they name

15:31

all of these places , they have this sort

15:33

of innate understanding of where

15:36

it is , where it is in relation to the other things

15:38

. You know what the terroir is like if we

15:40

talk about winemaking , what the climate

15:42

is like . So that's what the Galician

15:44

language I think brings is just the

15:47

ability to understand the land , just

15:49

totally intertwined .

15:50

That reminds me a bit of bass culture

15:52

, too , or any strong culture

15:54

, right ? They name things in a very specific

15:57

way , that is that it feels

15:59

almost like an internal , extra part

16:01

of the language where they have an Understanding

16:03

. That's really cool . Let's

16:06

jump into a quick break and and go

16:08

back a little bit more of the . The wine

16:10

side sounds good . You

16:13

are listening to the Peron cast and

16:21

we're back Noah , so we work together

16:23

at the Maison East . I'm really I'm

16:25

thankful for the whole team . It's an amazing team and

16:28

I'm glad you joined . We had a chat

16:30

it's a while ago , it feels like

16:32

10 years ago but

16:35

but one of the things that struck me is that you

16:38

mentioned some things about Galicia in terms

16:40

of wine that I'd

16:43

never heard before , and I've been

16:45

working with Galician wine for a very

16:47

, very long time . At this point , I'm

16:50

wondering if you could just give you a

16:53

bit of like a two minute . I'll put you

16:55

on the spot here . Oh boy , on

16:57

what ? Galicia ? The

16:59

basics of Galicia in terms of the wine

17:02

regions , the major

17:04

soils , where it is . Just

17:06

in case someone's tuning in and they may not know

17:08

anything about Galicia , sure , I'd

17:10

wanna know your take as someone who's , I

17:13

would consider you basically a local at this point

17:15

with the way you talk about things . So let's

17:18

start there .

17:19

What is Galicia ? Right , galicia is

17:21

, politically speaking , it's an autonomous

17:23

community which is like Spain's equivalent of states

17:26

or provinces . Galicia

17:28

is in the northwest of Spain , so if you're looking at a

17:30

map of Spain , it's in the top left-hand corner

17:32

, it's the chunk right above Portugal . So

17:34

if you take a look at the Portuguese

17:36

border with Spain , basically , and you go to the

17:38

top of Portugal and you keep going , that

17:41

top left-hand corner is Galicia . We're

17:43

talking about a climate

17:45

that's Atlantic , mostly Atlantic

17:48

, because it's surrounded on two sides by

17:50

the Atlantic Ocean . You have the North Coast , which is

17:52

kind of the Bay of Biscay continuing

17:54

out towards the Atlantic , and then you have the

17:56

Atlantic Coast , which is the western coast of

17:58

Galicia or an end of Spain , all

18:01

right . So Galicia's got five major

18:04

wine regions . You've got the Riás Baixas

18:06

, you've got Ribeiro , ribeiro

18:08

Sacra , valleoras and

18:10

Monterey , and I'm pronouncing

18:12

this Ribeiro and Ribeiro Sacra

18:15

. So whenever you see the E in the I

18:17

, it makes the A sound . So Ribeiro

18:19

, ribeiro Sacra , all right . So let's start

18:21

with Riás Baixas , because that's the wine region

18:23

that most people know . It's

18:25

most famous for the grape alboreño . Alboreño

18:27

is a white grape , so alboreño can

18:29

be really aromatic . It's got a lot of

18:31

terpenes , which Riesling

18:33

has as well . It's a chemical compound that makes

18:36

it very aromatic . Alboreño

18:38

actually wasn't planted there for

18:41

a long time . It was kind of like the minority

18:43

grape and it's sort of blown up since the

18:45

Riás Baixas wine region was founded in

18:47

1988 . Alboreño is with

18:49

a B right Instead of the V in Portuguese

18:51

because the variety comes from northern

18:53

Portugal and Galicia . Alboreño from Galicia

18:56

is usually a dry white

18:58

wine . It's very high in acid , great

19:00

with seafood . You get this sort of like lemon

19:03

lime zest , this incredible salinity

19:05

that they say comes from the Atlantic breezes . A

19:08

lot of the vineyards are planted in close

19:10

proximity to the ocean . So that's

19:12

alboreño . But now in Riás Baixas they're

19:14

also making red wine . They've got all

19:16

of these amazing native grapes with names like Caíno

19:19

, tinto , espadeiro , sousson

19:21

, all of these things . So a lot of winemakers

19:23

are going back to this tradition

19:25

because red grapes were the majority prior

19:28

to the 1980s . All right , so

19:30

that's Riás Baixas , and within Riás Baixas you've

19:32

got several different subzones . You

19:34

got the Valdo Salnes , which is close

19:36

to the ocean , that's . Most

19:38

of the wineries in Riás Baixas are in the Valdo

19:40

Salnes . A lot of the alboreño comes

19:43

from there . Then you've got Ribeira da Ulla

19:45

, which is north , it's sort of near

19:47

Santiago de Compostela , it's inland

19:49

, and this is a recent addition

19:51

, post 2000 . Then

19:53

you've got Oro Sal , which is south

19:55

, it's right on the border with Portugal

19:58

. And then you've got the Condado de Tea , which

20:00

is inland , and then tiny

20:03

, tiny you probably won't see wines from this

20:05

in the States You've got Soto Mayor , which

20:07

is right near the city of Vigo . Then

20:09

if we move east , we've got Ribeiro

20:12

. Ribeiro is Galicia's oldest

20:15

wine region . It became a wine

20:17

appellation in 1932

20:20

, I believe it also has Galicia's

20:22

oldest winemaking tradition . With

20:24

the Christianization of the Iberian Peninsula

20:27

after the fall of the Roman Empire , after all of these

20:29

Visigothic kingdoms came through , the

20:31

monks of Cluny , benedictine

20:33

monks , came through and they established monasteries

20:35

, and so they had to

20:37

grow some sort of wine . But quickly

20:40

that became a means

20:42

of economic influx for the monasteries

20:45

, and so they started growing wine , and

20:47

as Galicia's population grew it

20:49

was widely considered that the wines of Ribeiro

20:51

were the best wines . If anybody

20:53

out there has studied Spanish or Portuguese

20:56

medieval literature , maybe it's a little bit of

20:58

an issue .

20:58

Everyone who's listening has studied that for

21:00

sure .

21:00

Right for sure . So there's this

21:03

poem called the Cantigas

21:05

de Maria , by Alfonso X

21:07

, who was this king of Spain and Portugal

21:09

, and he mentions by name the

21:11

good wine of Orense . Orense is one of the

21:13

cities close to Ribeiro , so this

21:16

winemaking tradition goes back a long

21:18

, long time .

21:20

I wanted to ask you a question about this . The mother rock

21:22

of Galicia is granite

21:24

.

21:24

It is granite Galicia is a huge chunk of granite .

21:26

And so there are various . There

21:28

are other soils too , of course , but there's

21:31

a soil in Ribeiro that

21:33

I think is mispronounced often

21:35

. Could you give us the pronunciation

21:38

of this soil in

21:40

Ribeiro ?

21:41

For sure . So in Ribeiro they have decomposed

21:43

granite called sábrigo

21:46

, in Ribeiro it's called

21:48

shabri . The X in the

21:50

Galician language makes that sh sound

21:52

. So what is the same soil , decomposed

21:54

granite . In Ribeiro it's called shabri and

21:57

in Ribeiro it's called sábrigo .

21:59

Yeah , and you have it Going back really

22:01

quickly , because I think this is a key point the

22:05

seafood in Galicia . You

22:07

can gloss over this , but some would

22:09

argue that it's some of the greatest

22:12

, if not the greatest , in the world . And

22:14

I had a conversation with Gerardo Mendes at

22:16

Doferrero , who is very much

22:18

an aficionado

22:20

, an expert . He's very particular about

22:22

what he eats . He also , I believe

22:25

, has a photographic memory of about everything

22:27

, was telling me where

22:29

he gets certain things . And then

22:31

Manu was saying the same Albarino

22:34

has , and a lot of the wines in Galicia

22:36

have a beautiful pairing possibility

22:39

with seafood . Yeah , this

22:41

is just a perfect place for seafood , for

22:43

sure .

22:45

This is probably . I mean , I

22:47

haven't tasted all the seafood the world has to offer

22:49

, but I can tell you my expert

22:51

opinion is that it is the best seafood in the world

22:53

. You've got these estuaries , which

22:56

are basically drowned river valleys . At some

22:58

point in the past the sea rose up , and so

23:00

they're not like fjords of Norway . They're not as

23:02

sharp in profile , they're pretty eno rolling hills

23:05

that go right into the sea , but the

23:07

ocean comes right in , and

23:09

so all of these mussels , clams , oysters

23:11

, shrimp , and so

23:14

it's some of the most well nourished , best

23:16

seafood in the world .

23:18

When I taste wines from Galicia , especially

23:22

the white wines of Galicia , I

23:24

often find myself thinking

23:26

of these yeah , and

23:29

it's almost like the flavor . There's a deep

23:31

, almost chlorophyll salty thing

23:34

on some of these wines and as you go inland

23:36

there's more texture and it's really

23:39

an amazing pairing . Everyone should go

23:41

to Galicia Now . There's a high speed train

23:43

, so it's going to be very famous . So we

23:45

were talking about Rebeido . Yes

23:47

, there are a lot of small parcels

23:49

of land , that's . The other thing I think people miss

23:52

in Galicia is that

23:55

there are many , many , many

23:57

owners of small , small

23:59

vineyards .

24:00

Yeah .

24:00

And that's just what's happened . That's happened all over

24:02

the . You know France as well . It's happened all over the world

24:04

, Of course , but you don't find a lot of people

24:07

owning a hundred contiguous

24:09

hectares .

24:10

What happened is the monasteries . They

24:12

owned all the property , we'll say , and

24:14

just like the Napoleonic Code in France

24:17

, they took church property and

24:19

they auctioned it off . So the only

24:21

people who could afford it were rich people . But

24:24

in Galicia you've got a tradition where

24:26

all of the heirs so

24:29

at this point they were the male heirs , all of the heirs

24:31

in a family , get the property divided

24:33

up equally between all of them . So

24:36

there's an anecdote that's really great , that and this

24:38

is from 30 years ago , this is not

24:40

from the Middle Ages but in Odense

24:42

, which is kind of a rural province in the middle of Galicia

24:45

, there was a man who died and he had

24:47

seven children , and he had

24:49

a house that had six rooms , and

24:52

so they took it to court . They went to a judge and

24:54

the judge ruled that six of the

24:56

children could have the rooms three

24:58

downstairs , three upstairs and the

25:00

seventh heir got the staircase . So

25:05

this is the how

25:07

it all got started , right ? This is the rise of what is

25:09

called the mini fundio . The mini fundio is

25:11

basically a small plot . So if you imagine

25:13

you know somebody farming vines

25:16

in the space the size of a Manhattan

25:18

studio apartment , that's what

25:20

you get . And then if you take 172

25:22

of those studio apartment sized

25:25

plots and give them to Gerardo Mendes

25:27

, you get doferero . So for

25:29

a lot of people they just farm what they have

25:31

inherited or what their families have had and

25:33

you know they sell those grapes . There's not

25:35

a lot of people who own vast swathes

25:37

of land , so it's a lot of growers

25:40

who collaborate either with cooperatives or

25:42

growers who , under the strict

25:44

, you know watch of a

25:46

winemaker , will sell their grapes to any

25:48

given winery .

25:50

I think it also speaks to the

25:52

kind of handmade nature of a lot of

25:54

wines from Galicia . Yeah , for sure

25:56

, In terms of Ribeiro , the

25:58

primary grapes , I'm

26:00

in love with wines from Ribeiro and

26:03

I think that it's . Trissadura is

26:06

an incredible grape . You

26:08

find it expresses very well

26:10

further south , in Monterey and

26:13

in Ribeiro , along with all

26:15

these other grapes and support what

26:18

are the general grapes that people

26:20

should know in Ribeiro besides Trissadura

26:22

.

26:23

So the grape par excellence

26:25

in Ribeiro is Trissadura . In

26:27

Ribeiro you've got three valleys

26:29

. You've got the Avia River , you've got the Migno

26:32

River and you've got the Arnoia River . So

26:34

in the Avia and the Migno a lot , a lot

26:36

of wine is made with Trissadura . You've got another

26:38

grape called Torrantes , which is not the

26:40

same as the grape grown in Argentina . As

26:43

Torrantes , if you go down to Arnoia

26:45

there's a grape that's native to

26:47

Arnoia , called Lado , and that's present

26:49

. A lot of people , for example , will know the wines of Luisancho

26:52

Rodriguez , so his wines have a

26:54

fair amount of Lado in them as well . So

26:57

you've got Trissadura , you've got Godello . There's

26:59

Godello in Ribeiro as well . There's Alboreño in

27:01

Ribeiro . Obviously it expresses itself

27:03

differently than in Reyspeichas . And

27:06

then in the red grapes you've got

27:08

a lot of Mancia , because Mancia came

27:11

into Galicia after Phylloxer in the

27:13

20th century and sort of spread because there was a

27:15

just like there was an Alboreño craze . More recently

27:17

there was a Mancia craze . So you've got Mancia

27:19

. But there's other native grapes , like Sousson , like

27:22

Ferron , there's Caignotinto

27:24

, there's Caigno Bravo , there's

27:26

Caigno Longo . Generally

27:28

, if we talk about grapes in Galicia , there's two families

27:31

. There are the Eastern

27:33

families and the Western families . So

27:35

the Western families are like the Caigno family

27:37

. Caigno is widely regarded by Ampliographers

27:40

, grape geneticists , as being native to

27:42

the Galicia , portugal

27:44

area . And then you got grapes like Mancia

27:47

and Godello that are also in the Biertho

27:49

. They come from the Eastern part

27:51

of Galicia and people aren't quite as

27:53

sure as to where they come from . But

27:56

a lot of those grapes that have come in sort of from Castileão

27:58

and that kind of thing come from the Eastern

28:01

part . And then the Caigno family Albarino also belongs

28:03

to the Caigno family sort of just sprung

28:05

up from wild vines that were growing

28:07

in Galicia by the Atlantic coast . Cool

28:10

yeah . So the thing in Rebedo

28:13

to remember basically , is that it's got a lot of history

28:15

. It's a big chunk of granite , so a lot of

28:17

these wines are going to be very vertical , sort of ethereal

28:20

. But Rebedo is the transitional

28:22

climate between the Atlantic climate and the continental

28:25

climate , and so you're gonna have more contrast in

28:27

temperature between day and night , between winter and

28:29

summer . There's a lot more exposure

28:32

, depending on the plots . Back

28:34

at the beginning of this podcast we were talking

28:36

about that . It depends , right , and I think that's

28:38

really the answer for a lot of Galicia is that there's

28:41

no way to make a generalization . You

28:43

can say all you want about Atlantic climate

28:45

and salty sea breezes and

28:48

this and that and the other thing , but to really

28:50

understand it you have to be on the ground and

28:52

you have to talk about each individual wine . And

28:54

I don't know if we have time I'll talk about the other three

28:56

.

28:57

We'll keep going . I think we should . But I wanna say

28:59

something just to add on about Rebedo

29:01

. One thing I find as a marker

29:03

is more flavor

29:06

extract and a honey

29:08

note For sure . And working

29:10

with Amir Yoroh for years , and

29:13

we're now working with a guy named Gutisejo

29:15

Amixtura who is encyclopedic

29:18

with his knowledge of the area , I

29:20

think it's important that he is a

29:22

generalization . You know , wine making does

29:25

impact what's

29:27

in the glass , but that's what I find

29:29

with Luisancho's wines too . There's

29:32

an extract , a beautiful

29:34

extract in the wines .

29:35

Yeah , I think with Tracelluda you get

29:37

this sort of floral honeysuckle thing

29:40

that just floats over the base

29:42

of the fruit and the acidity , because with

29:44

granite and with Galician wines , acidity

29:46

is probably the if we wanna generalize , that's

29:48

probably the one thing that it all shares is

29:51

this electric backbone of acidity . What

29:53

about Ribeira Sacra ? So Ribeira

29:55

Sacra , like Ries

29:58

Baichas , like Monterey

30:00

, there's history there . But

30:02

if we talk about the Dio , the

30:05

Ribeira Sacra starts in 1996

30:07

. So you got different subzones

30:09

and if we break it down into its most basic

30:12

components , you have two rivers . You have the River

30:14

Sil and the River Migno . So the

30:16

Migno it starts in the mountains of Lugo

30:18

, kind of in the middle of Galicia , in the north , and

30:20

it runs south and it runs through Ribeira and

30:22

it runs through Ribeyes in the Condado Tea and

30:24

it runs through Oro Sal and then it ends

30:27

in the Atlantic Ocean and for a

30:29

lot of that it forms the border between Galicia

30:31

and Portugal . But in Lugo

30:33

, where the Ribeira Sacra is , it

30:36

runs through this tectonic trench . We're

30:38

not talking about erosion , we're talking about tectonic

30:41

action . So millions of

30:43

years ago there was all of these plates

30:45

and they were pushing together and pulling apart

30:47

and they created some serious

30:49

trenches when they pull apart , and

30:51

so over millions of years these rivers

30:53

have filled them in and there's been some erosion

30:56

, but it's not like the Grand Canyon , for example

30:58

, when it was the work of erosion over millions and

31:00

millions of years . What you get is

31:02

these incredibly steep slopes . We're

31:05

talking about degrees between 30

31:07

degrees and almost 90 degrees , so

31:09

that's like a vertical , a right angle , so

31:12

anywhere between 30 and 90

31:14

degrees of slope . It's pretty crazy . And

31:16

then on the other side so imagine the Migno

31:19

coming down then the seal joins it . So

31:21

the Ribeira Sacra kind of looks like an L . The

31:24

seal comes in from Castileão , located

31:26

to East of Galicia , and it also filled

31:28

in another tectonic trench and it

31:30

also created the same kind of slopes . And

31:33

so if you look at the sloped

31:35

vineyards of the world , like if we talk about the Northern

31:37

Rhone or we talk about the Mosul

31:40

in Germany , things like that , I mean

31:42

it's the same kind of or the Dodo in Portugal , it's

31:44

this stunning scenery and you think

31:46

how could people possibly have arrived

31:49

here , looked at this and said , okay , I can

31:51

plant vines , I'm gonna make wine here , and the answer

31:53

is just an incredible feat of human engineering

31:55

, which is terracing . So what you do right

31:58

is basically you start

32:00

digging a trench in the side of

32:02

the slope and with the rock

32:04

and the soil that you take out of that , you build a wall

32:06

until it's a terrace , and

32:08

this is to prevent erosion , but it's also to

32:10

give you a surface to even plant vines on

32:13

, because you can't plant vines on an 86

32:15

degree slope . So

32:17

the Ribena Sacra is basically

32:20

that , and then if we talk about soil , it's

32:22

also it forms the transition point

32:24

in Galicia . So the western half

32:26

of Galicia is all granitic . It's a big chunk of

32:29

granite , whether it's decomposed granite , whether

32:31

it's metamorphized granite

32:33

. You know you get nice and that kind of rock . In

32:36

the Ribena Sacra there's actually a fault line that

32:38

you can see in the sub-zone

32:40

of Amandi , near the town of Doade

32:42

, and it's the fault line where

32:44

the rock changes from granite

32:46

to slate , because

32:49

in the eastern part of Galicia you have slate . So

32:52

the Ribena Sacra is known for Mencia

32:54

or Mencia . So

32:56

Mencia is a grape that entered after

32:58

Phylloxra . Phylloxra , just like in the rest of Spain

33:00

and Europe , kind of devastated the

33:02

regions and they had to pull up all these grapes . So

33:05

Mencia was a grape that entered

33:07

. It was pretty high yielding

33:09

, people liked it and it sort

33:11

of stuck around . But you also have native

33:14

grapes like Brancelau Merenzao

33:17

, which is the Galician name for trusso

33:19

, so that probably entered along the

33:21

Camino de Santiago . Somebody coming from France

33:23

, maybe from the Jura , came

33:26

and they left a sapling

33:28

, a seedling of trusso

33:30

, and they call it Merenzao . So you have these

33:32

other blends as well . And then in white grapes

33:34

we've got alberino , of course , and

33:37

govello is probably the most common , but

33:39

you've got other ones like Dona Branca . Galicia

33:41

is a wealth of native

33:43

grapes .

33:45

One of the things I'll never forget it . The first time

33:47

I went to Ribeira Sacra basically

33:49

no one knew what it was

33:51

. This was before the Yerik Azimov article

33:53

which kind of blew up Ribeira Sacra in

33:55

New York and

33:57

I was very sick but

33:59

I knew because Andre

34:02

had told me how stunning the

34:04

landscape is and I just forced

34:06

myself to go . I was very green

34:08

, like literally my face was green To

34:12

see the way the

34:15

, the kind of dappled light

34:17

of rbarisacra on these terraces

34:19

along a river .

34:20

Yeah .

34:21

It's just incredible . There's an orange

34:24

tree at the bottom of

34:26

Vina , canada , that

34:28

I walked down to and

34:30

realized how unbelievably

34:32

steep it is , and this kind

34:34

of viticulture that's

34:37

heroic , heroic viticulture . Yeah

34:39

, very much like . It reminded me of the Mosul

34:41

in some ways in terms of steepness , but just

34:43

a totally different flavor , obviously , in terms

34:45

of the culture et cetera . But rbarisacra

34:48

is something that people used to

34:50

say . They're rustic wines People kind of drive

34:52

through going to be here , yeah , and

34:55

it's been amazing to see what's happened , because

34:57

it wasn't that long ago that there

34:59

was hardly any rbarisacra in the country .

35:02

Yeah , and , like I said , it is an

35:04

invention in terms of the regulation

35:07

of the DO and all of that . But the winemaking

35:09

history goes back hundreds and hundreds of years

35:11

and , like the rest of Eglisia , it's a story

35:13

of clawing one's way back

35:15

from the brink . You had a couple of pioneering

35:18

winemakers who decided to go

35:20

against the current of this exodus from

35:23

rural areas and they said , okay , we're going to stay and we're

35:25

going to make wine , and if it sells , it sells

35:27

. And now it's a functioning

35:29

wine region and year

35:31

after year , you see more wines from rbarisacra

35:34

and you see more press and

35:36

people start to notice it . Now it's

35:38

in wine books , for example . It's

35:40

not , it doesn't merit a full page like Reyes Baishis

35:42

does , but it gets a mention , and so it's

35:44

really incredible how people can recover

35:47

something that is on the brink of

35:49

being lost , which is a great segue into

35:51

Valle Horras . Valle Horras is also

35:53

a story of recovery . There was a project

35:56

called Revival or Revival

35:58

, which stands for recuperating

36:01

or recovering the vineyards of Valle

36:03

Horras , Revival . So during

36:06

phylloxra , a lot of native grapes

36:08

were pulled up . You had a lot of plantations

36:11

afterwards of Palomino actually

36:13

Palomino and what the

36:15

Galeasians call Garnaca tintureira

36:18

, which is Alicante Bouchette . So

36:20

you had those two grapes , alicante Bouchette and

36:23

Palomino , and those were basically

36:25

planted because they were high yielding , because people wanted

36:27

to make bulk wines . People were still drinking wines

36:29

. There wasn't any thought to quality . But

36:31

the grape that is emblematic

36:33

of Valle Horras now is

36:36

Godeyo , and Godeyo was there

36:38

. Godeyo is probably , it's considered

36:40

to have originated from the banks of the Seale

36:42

River , whether in Biafaro or Galicia . Any good

36:44

Galician worth their salt will tell you that of course Godeyo

36:46

comes from Galicia . We did it first . Then those

36:48

you know , those people in Biafaro stole it from

36:50

us . But in the

36:53

seventies there was a project

36:55

that was begun by the what's called the

36:57

agricultural extension , the Estacion Agraria

36:59

in Spain , and there was a guy

37:01

who came along

37:03

, horacio Fernandes I'm getting

37:05

the name wrong . If Araceli listens to this it's her father

37:08

, I'm sorry . Horacio comes

37:10

along and with help from people from

37:12

the Estacion Agraria they go around and

37:14

they say okay , well , you know , we need to figure out how

37:17

to recover winemaking in Valle

37:19

Horras , because up until then the only industry

37:21

was slate mining . But not everybody could

37:23

live from the mines and not everybody wanted to . So

37:25

they went around and they got samples of all of the grapes

37:27

, and Godeyo was the one that outperformed

37:29

all of the rest . And then they

37:32

did a bunch of experiments over , we'll say , 10

37:34

years and finally they figured out how to do

37:36

it . And that was

37:38

the start of this project called Godeval , which

37:41

Jorge Ordonias first brought

37:43

to the US in the nineties , early

37:45

2000s , I want to say , and that

37:47

sort of kicked off this Godeyo . I don't want to

37:49

say craze , but kicked off the Godeyo

37:51

revolution Within Spain . People

37:54

were producing Godeyo and they said , okay , well

37:56

, we can do this and we can make a living from this

37:58

. And now Godeyo is the grape

38:00

of Valle Horras .

38:02

I noticed when I was there that

38:04

, like you're saying , there is

38:06

a recovery that goes beyond Godeyo

38:09

. I think the flag was planted with

38:11

Godeyo , but we personally work , you

38:13

know , we work with wines that have much more than

38:15

Godeo . So Valle Horras I think the story

38:17

is still yet to be fully

38:20

told . It's a place that people

38:22

have a certain view via

38:25

the lens of Godeyo , but

38:27

there's so much the reds of Valle

38:29

Horras , which are

38:32

stunning . There are many

38:34

wineries in the New York scene , at least

38:36

, that I really respect to the make

38:38

reds from Valle Horras and that's not something

38:40

that would probably be brought up on a typical

38:43

test .

38:44

Yeah , for sure . I mean

38:46

. I'm saying all of this about Godeyo because I think

38:48

it's important to know the history . But

38:50

beyond that , you know , there's always going

38:52

to be people who say , okay , well , what

38:54

else can we do ? So this is one

38:56

historical grape that was recovered . But

38:59

Branca Yao , which in Valle Horras

39:01

was called Alvarello , was

39:03

also planted there . You know People

39:05

in general . There's a historian

39:07

called Xavier Castro

39:09

in Galicia and he's got a great quote that said

39:12

most of the history of Galicia was written

39:14

shivering in the cold . So

39:17

if you're in a rural area , if it rains a lot , if

39:19

it's humid , you know the kind of humidity that seeps into

39:21

your bones are you going to drink white wine or are

39:23

you going to drink red wine . So that's the logic

39:25

. So for the majority of Galicia's

39:27

history it was known for red wine and people

39:30

drank red wine . The

39:32

only exception to this is Rebedo . That was known for white

39:34

wine . But everywhere else people planted

39:36

. You know , for self-consumption people planted

39:39

red wine . So Branca Yao has a long history

39:41

as well , and that's yet to be written . If there's

39:43

demand over here , then that

39:45

will be the wind beneath the wings

39:47

, because a lot of the time people

39:49

say oh well , there's demand for godeo , so we're going to plant godeo , but

39:52

nobody wants red wine from Galicia . It's weird

39:54

. Nobody likes it . We have a duty , I think , to

39:56

tell people . Well , you know , it's not just this monolithic

39:59

land of white wine and oysters

40:01

.

40:03

There are not many places

40:05

in Spain that you

40:07

can , with respect

40:09

to the nature of the place , make

40:11

medium weight red wines

40:14

that have a lot of freshness

40:16

Without a lot of intervention

40:18

. I've seen it in other places , where people are just

40:20

the harvest is where you get different flavors . But

40:22

I think , alicia , that's one of

40:24

the things that really excites me is that that's

40:27

where it hasn't been told and a lot of people don't know

40:29

these wines and they have that character . We

40:31

I don't want to put Monterey in the corner-

40:34

yeah , nobody puts Monterey in the corner . No , it

40:36

was Monterey in the corner . What's up

40:38

with Monterey ?

40:39

So Monterey is the Tamiga

40:41

River that runs from sort of the middle of Southern

40:43

Galicia down into Portugal . Monterey

40:46

is very , very deeply

40:48

linked to Portugal . There's a part of it that

40:50

was even sort of its own independent republic

40:53

, with some Portuguese towns . That's a story for another

40:55

day . You can read about it , although

40:57

, on winesofgalesiacom . Maybe

41:00

by the time this podcast comes out

41:02

it'll be live on the web .

41:04

So that's my website . If this podcast makes it to the line

41:06

today , we will , yes

41:08

, the wines which you've been building for

41:10

quite a long time .

41:11

Yeah , so winesofgalesiacom . Monterey

41:14

is a small wine region

41:16

. Most people in the States don't know any wines

41:18

from Monterey besides those of José Luis Mateo

41:20

of Quinta de Mura de ella . There's a lot

41:22

of native grapes there as well . There's Menthea

41:25

there , there's Godella there , there's Dona

41:27

Branca there . Monterey is basically

41:29

a valley , so Monterey is a wine region

41:31

. It's relatively new as well , in 96

41:33

. It was also started or

41:35

they began , or they gave them the official go-ahead

41:38

from the Spanish government . But people have been

41:40

making wine there again for hundreds

41:42

and hundreds of years . The thing with

41:44

Monterey is it's the southernmost

41:46

Appalachian in Galicia and

41:48

so it gets a lot of heat . There's a lot of climatic

41:51

contrast between the winter and summer , so

41:53

you get a lot more ripeness , you get a lot more extraction

41:55

. It almost seems like Castileón

41:58

in its climate , but there is still

42:00

Atlantic influence . So if

42:02

you drink the wines of Mura de ella , for example

42:04

, these are exactly what you're talking about . They're

42:06

medium-bodied , they're high in acid

42:09

, they've got this backbone , but they're

42:11

amazing . I love a wine

42:13

maker friend of mine , manuel Castro

42:15

, who is the wine maker for Vina Costeda , which maybe

42:17

people have drunk as well . That's over here . He

42:19

says that their wine's with a Galician accent and

42:22

I absolutely love that . I think it rings totally

42:25

true . One of the greatest things about the

42:27

wine world is that you can

42:29

drink the same grape from different

42:31

places and yet it tastes completely different

42:33

, whether you want to call it terroir , whether you want to call it whatever

42:35

. But I think that just sums it up . They're wines with a Galician

42:37

accent . You can drink Mancia from Biertel

42:39

and Mancia from Monterey and Mancia from Ribella

42:42

. Sacra has three different wines .

42:43

Thank you for that . That is a very much

42:46

more in depth than I thought we'd get on Galicia

42:48

. That's really . Thank you very much for

42:50

that . And besides

42:53

people meeting you on the streets working

42:55

for him , he's on East . Where can they find

42:57

you ? What's your Instagram handle ?

42:59

So , it's at nchichester

43:02

C-H-I-C-H-E-S-T-E-R

43:04

at nchichester , and they can check me out

43:06

at winesofgalliciacom

43:08

.

43:09

Great . Thank you so much for being on now .

43:10

Thank you for having me .

43:15

Thanks for listening to the Perron Cast . I'm your host , ryan

43:17

Looper . Today's episode was

43:19

produced by yours truly , theme

43:22

music by the Julian Tamers . Special

43:24

thanks to today's guests , the

43:27

teams at D'Amazon East and D'Amazon Selections

43:30

and all of the growers in

43:32

the D'Amazon portfolio . Remember , if

43:34

you turn the bottle around , you find the Perron . It's

43:37

D'Amazon . And if you

43:39

have a Perron in a party , you should really share that

43:41

thing . Quit hogging it . Okay , pass the Perron

43:43

. If you like the podcast

43:45

, you wanna find it on one of the platforms

43:47

. Just search the Perron Cast , hit , follow

43:50

. We got lots more to come . We're

43:52

also on the Instagram at

43:54

the Perron Cast . Look

43:58

forward to sharing some more with you

44:00

soon . Thanks .