Grapes and wines of Galicia

Introduction

Galician wine-making provides single-varietal and multi-varietal wines of an excellent quality, based on ancestral grape varieties dating back to before the phylloxera plague.

The whites are the best-known, with the albariño variety as the protagonist in the Rías Baixas area; in the Ribeiro area, varieties are blended, with a predominance of treixadura; while in the interior of Galicia (Ribeira Sacra, Valdeorras and Monterrei) godello is the most prevalent. Other varieties with a long history, above all in multi-varietal wines, are torrontés, caíño blanco, loureira, dona branca and lado. In the demarcations qualified as Vinos de la Tierra, the blanca legítima variety stands out.

In red wines, the mencía variety predominates in the Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras areas, and is the variety most cultivated in areas where white grapes are predominant, such as Monterrei or Ribeiro. Along with this variety, other pre-phylloxera ones are used, such as sousón, caíño (largo, bravo and tinto), brancellao and merenzao. Other minority ancestral varieties are also being recovered in their areas of origin, such as espadeiro, castañal and pedral in the Rías Baixas area, ferrón in the Ribeiro area and mouratón in the Ribeira Sacra area.

The production of multi-varietal wines can be complemented with other grapes: white wines with palomino, albillo and chenín blanco; reds with garnacha and tempranillo.

Production is beginning to diversify with the marketing of sparkling wines and the recovery of toasted wine, a sweet wine obtained from the best grapes.