Lives May Depend On You Drinking More Ribeira Sacra
A little dramatic? Maybe, maybe not. But we should all definitely be enjoying more Galician reds.
This week, we welcome a new contributor, Noah Chichester, author of winesofgalicia.com—the only English-language website dedicated to Galician wine. Noah’s wine writing has appeared in Jancis Robinson, Decanter, GuildSomm, and others. Noah will be helping Everyday Drinking expand its already-robust coverage of Spanish wines.
“You know, they call us the Iluminati,” says Paloma Rodríguez Moure. We’re sitting under a canopy of vines at Abadía da Cova, her family’s winery in Ribeira Sacra. Paloma, along with her brother Adrián and her cousin Jose, is part of the third generation at the helm of the project. Their patio looks out over terraced vineyards that lead down to the Miño River.
Directly across from us, the river bends around a hilly promontory covered in pine trees, with the exception of one bald patch where the land has been cleared like a patient’s head being shaved for brain surgery. “It’s a shame you have to see it like this,” Paloma tuts. But ugly or not, this view is a perfect example of the building blocks of this region: wood, water, and wine.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Ribeira Sacra falls among the most dramatic wine landscapes in Europe. This is a place of austere beauty, where sweeping terraced slopes drop sharply down the sides of river canyons to the water below. Far from the well-trafficked coast, Ribeira Sacra is tucked away in Galicia’s center, where the south-flowing Miño and the west-flowing Sil River converge in an L shape. The rivers are the region’s lifeblood—not only forming a geographical link, but also giving this place a name. “Ribeira Sacra” translates to “Sacred Riverbank,” a modern nod to the medieval monasteries dotted along the rivers.
Though people have been making wine here for centuries, the modern wine region didn’t get its start until the 1990s, when government money finally made its way to Galicia and a few bureaucrats in the rural department with a love for this crazy landscape led the charge to get growers organized and petition to form a Denominación de Origen.
The other term you always hear in conjunction with Ribeira Sacra is “heroic viticulture.” The dizzying slopes of the Sil and Miño river valleys can reach near-vertical in some places, and so all the work—from pruning to picking—is done by hand.
At least we can drive between the vineyards. Wedged into Jose’s tiny car as he takes hairpin turns on two wheels with a practiced casualness that makes me think he actually enjoys terrifying his guests, I think about the endurance of the people who had to walk along the curving roads carved into the slopes.
After an afternoon picking my way up and down terraced vineyards and talking about Ribeira Sacra’s history, the conversation has turned to the future. “We’ve been called the Iluminati,” Paloma tells me, “because we said that the future wasn’t in the cheap wine Ribeira Sacra has been turning out for the past thirty years.” As it turns out, making wine that sells for less than €10 in a region where all the farming has to be done by hand becomes a problem.
This isn’t the first time I’m having this conversation with a winemaker in Ribeira Sacra. The region has been guided by the same ideology for most of its nearly thirty-year existence, with a tendency to favor a few large wineries that made cheap, young mencía wines that Galicians were used to drinking.
It was a safe bet, because 90 percent of Ribeira Sacra’s production stays in Galicia. Up until now, the region has merrily rolled along, enjoying steady growth and churning out simple vinos de chateo (wine that’s so easy to drink you can quickly finish it and move on to the next bar). But this year, the music stopped and the lights came on.
Faced with a slump in red wine consumption and excess wine in their cellars from a few bumper crops around the pandemic years, some of the bigger wineries sent out a short, impersonal letter to the growers they’d been working with for years: “Sorry, no contract this year.”
After months of gloomy predictions that the Ribeira Sacra was done for, the Galician government got its act together and authorized the first-ever crisis distillation in Ribeira Sacra. It’s an extreme measure that aims to take wine out of the market, balancing supply and demand and making it easier for wineries to keep buying grapes. Producers were given about one euro for each liter of wine they took to be distilled into alcohol for industrial use. Although this vintage was the first time a Galician wine region has resorted to distillation, it’s not new to Spain: wineries in Rioja also took advantage of crisis distillation subsidies in the 2023 and 2024 vintages to get rid of surplus wine.
Ribeira Sacra’s troubles might come as a surprise, since its wines tend to be seen as somm candy and are generally well-received in the international press. But the popularity of a select few producers abroad belies a wider struggle at home: there’s a real question as to whether the region can survive. Galicia has long been affected by a steady drip of young people emigrating from the interior to the coast, and for many aging growers who have no one to take over for them, the events of the past year might just make them throw in the towel.
But according to Jose, Adrián, and Paloma, it doesn’t have to be this way. The new generation of the Rodríguez clan is part of a small group of forward-thinking winemakers who are doing things against the grain in Ribeira Sacra. Though their winery is familiar in Galicia for its entry-level mencía, they’ve now set their sights on making single-vineyard wines from old vines of traditional varieties like merenzao and brancellao. Their wines aren’t widely available in the US, but they plan to change that in the future.
Together with other producers like Algueira or Guímaro, who have reached benchmark status, and lesser-known but still pioneering projects like Prádio, Adegas Saíñas, or Pablo Soldavini, there’s an undercurrent of change bubbling in the region, based on limited-production, higher-priced wines that let the region’s old vines and mindblowing terroir speak for themselves and provide a lifeline for future growers to make a living in this harsh terrain.
There’s also a push for zonification—the kind that’s had limited success in other Spanish regions like Bierzo or Priorat. But for Ribeira Sacra, getting people to care about whether a wine comes from a subzone or single vineyard might be putting the cart before the horse. We probably need to focus on drinking more Ribeira Sacra, and then gradually get more geeky.
For those of us who don’t live in Galicia, it’s vital to give this region some love: not just the innovative, pioneering cuvées, but also the “daily bread” mencía—a noble sub-$20 alternative to other perfectly serviceable weekday wines. Because, at the end of the day, lives—and livelihoods—may depend on it.
A Roster of Ribeira Sacra
Six reds from mencía and other local Galician grapes.
2020 Bodegas Rectoral de Amandi 'Matilda Nieves' Mencia ($15)
From the largest winery in Ribeira Sacra, which also purchases grapes from over 400 local growers. It’s a classic young mencía, with a typical Ribeira Sacra nose of tart cherry and blackberry and grippy tannins. Think of this as a social movement—the more you drink, the more growers get a contract and the more people can afford to stay in Ribeira Sacra.
2021 Envinate 'Lousas' Vina de Aldea ($42)
Envínate gets a lot of love in Ribeira Sacra roundups, and rightfully so. The four friends behind the project have done a lot to elevate the region’s status—which is ironic, since they choose to work outside the DO. Lousas, which means slate in Gallego, is a classic regional blend of mencía (80 percent) and the remaining 20 percent of merenzao, brancellao, caíño, sousón, mouratón, garnacha tintorera, godello, and palomino.
2016 Adega Algueira ‘Serradelo’ ($40)
Fernándo González began making wine in the Ribeira Sacra in 1979, and his wines, like this one made from brancellao, are a must for those looking to understand the potential of native varieties. Foot-trodden and aged in old oak barrels, it’s like opening a sachet of dried violets and rose petals, with undertones of petrichor.
2021 Dominio do Bibei ‘Lalama’ ($24)
Though wines from the subzone of Amandi tend to dominate in the export market, Dominio do Bibei, based in the Bibei River Valley in the Quiroga-Bibei subzone, shows the breadth of the region. About 17 miles southeast of the Sil River, the winery produces elegant, age-worthy wines. ‘Lalama’ is mostly mencía (85 percent), with small amounts of mouratón, sousón, brancellao, and garnacha tintorera.
2019 Guímaro ‘Finca Meixeman’ ($47)
Pedro Rodríguez of Guímaro was one of the first to join the budding Ribeira Sacra appellation in 1996. Finca Meixeman is the original family vineyard, a 1.2 hectare plot of old vines replanted after phylloxera by Pedro's grandmother. The wine is earthy and crunchy. It smells like a Galician mushroom gathering expedition, with overtones of high-toned fresh red fruit and forest herbs.
2021 Bodegas Ronsel do Sil 'Vel'uveyra' Mencia ($24)
Named for the wake of passing boats on the Sil River, this estate was founded by Maria José Yravedra. It’s mostly mencía with a smattering of Garnacha from vineyards in the Ribeiras do Sil subzone and in Quiroga-Bibei. A classic, easy-drinking mencía that leaves you wanting more.
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Noah! Good to see you here. And I agree, I wish I saw more Galician reds on menus outside of the region - although being so close, we're lucky here in Porto that we see quite a few.