Nanclares y Prieto | "O Bocoi Vello de Silvia" Albariño | Ribeira Sacra, Spain | 2019

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Pair with: anything from the sea (especially fresh), fish tacos, summery pastas, fresh salads

🧑🏽‍🌾 Farming: Practicing Organic with some Biodynamic influences

🥶 Serve: Cold

🌎 Region: Ribeira Sacra, Spain

🍇 Grape Varieties: Albariño

🌱 Vine age: 29-95 years

🤓 Geek Out: Alberto Nanclares became a vigneron in the mid 1990's after retiring from his career as an Economist. He and his wife moved to Spain's North Atlantic seaside village of Castrelo to relax and enjoy retirement. The property itself happened to have some vineyard land which he eventually began to farm as a hobby with the help of some neighbors. The first vintage was vinified in his garage in 1997. Today, Alberto, with the help of his friend, Silvia Prieto, farms a mere 5 hectares of vines in Rias Baixas that are dispersed amongst 13 tiny parcels. 

Nanclares y Prieto's focus is to make classic age-worthy Albariños that express both variety and terruño via organic viticulture and VERY minimal intervention in the cellar. The coastal Atlantic town of Cambados, where many of these parcels are located, is considered the ancestral home to the Albariño grape. 

O Bocoi Vello de Silvia is 100% Albariño from several plots in Sanxenxo and Meaño. The vines are 25-95 years old, and the plots are largely west-facing and planted on a mix of clay, granodiorite, and sandy granite soils. The grapes were harvested by hand, sorted, and foot-stomped in the ancient method, with about two days of maceration on the skins and stems followed by a gentle pressing in a pneumatic press. The juice ferments with its native yeasts in reconditioned 90+ year-old 1900L chestnut barrels, then rests on the lees for 7 months in the same vessel, with weekly batonnage for the first month.