2014 Selección de Añada, Pazo de Señoráns, Rías Baixas
Critics reviews
Limpid gold. High-pitched citrus and orchard fruit scents are complemented by honeysuckle and smoky minerals. Juicy, penetrating and pure, offering vibrant pear skin and white peach flavours and a touch of fennel. Becomes spicier and fleshier with air, finishing with excellent clarity and length, leaving mineral and subtle leesy notes behind.
Josh Raynolds, Vinous.com (January 2016)
Full bottle 1,358 g. Tasted blind and tasted again (not blind) several times over several days. It was aged for 36 months on lees in stainless steel. Then, it was racked and aged in stainless steel until April 2023, when it was bottled.
When cold and in the first couple of days, the wine was smoky and so white-knuckle tense that it felt like a blow to the jaw. Bone on bone. Bitter. But day by day, it began to open; it was an extraordinary journey—day one: struck flint, lime pickle, a sulky sourpuss. By the time it had been open for a week, it was so heady, so floral, so aromatically luscious that if you'd handed me a glass without a word, I would have been confounded: Gewurz? Muscat? Viognier? Torrontés?
Too tense and sinew-stripped mineral for Gewurz. It's too terse and salty for Muscat. Too slim-waisted for Viognier. Too much steel-cut stone fruit for Torrontés. But rose petals. But clementine peel. But jasmine and black pepper. Candied lemon peel. Day 10: flowers and melted butter; golden gooseberries and mirabelle plums; grapefruit and bergamot. Diaphanous, perplexing. It is a moody, recalcitrant, capricious and utterly wonderful wine that proved to me that Albariño really can age.
Drink 2023 - 2035
Tamlyn Currin, JancisRobinson.com (August 2024)
It wasn't bottled until April 2023, and 14,000 bottles were produced.
I think the 2014 Albariño Selección de Añada could be the finest vintage of this characterful long-ageing Albariño, from a year with a more moderate 13% alcohol and very high acidity (and low pH) that make the wine fresher and more vibrant. It is developing very slowly and showing quite young after it spent over 30 months with lees in 1,500- and 3,000-litre stainless steel tanks.
It has a pale colour and an elegant nose with notes of freshly cut grass, white flowers and wet granite. The palate is vibrant with effervescent acidity, and it has a long, dry and tasty finish with an austere sensation, far away from the tropical notes of some past vintages. This is superb and should continue developing nicely in bottle. Bravo!
Drink 2023 - 2032
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate (November 2023)
The ripe-pineapple character makes this much more satisfying than earlier vintages of this wine. Plenty of structure and some creaminess. Some soft tannins on the long finish, so this is a wine for richer food.
Drink or hold
James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com (August 2018)
About this WINE
Pazo de Senorans
Frighteningly fashionable, Pazo de Señoráns is now seen as the very best Galician winery. Located at Vilanoviña, in the Pontevedra town of Meis, winery and vines alike benefit from a situation in one of Rías Baixas’ most prestigious wine-making sub-zones.
The vines are farmed at relatively low altitudes, not too far from the sea, with the soils influenced accordingly by sandy elements. Vinification is in stainless steel and bottling is early. The result is a wine of great aromatic harmony, with distinctive notes of late-season apples, fennel and a hint of verbena;
Rias Baixas
Nestled in the south-west corner of Galicia on the Atlantic coast bordering Portugal's Vinho Verde region, Rias Baixas has firmly established itself as the star region of modern Spanish white wines. Production is mostly small scale, labour-intensive and dominated by family-run bodegas, all of which contributes to the high-quality, idiosyncratic character of the wines.
Albariño (aka Alvarinho in Vinho Verde) is the dominant grape in the region, robust and thick-skinned enough to withstand the local cool, humid, maritime conditions. It yields intensely aromatic wines evocative of almonds, peaches and citrus-peel scents with elegant, grassy overtones. Albariño is ideally enjoyed in its youth and is particularly suited to seafood due to its crisp acidity and clean, pure fruit.
It is sometimes also blended with other Galician grapes - the perfumed Treixadura or the herbal-scented Loureira, for example - but it is as a single varietal wine that it really shines, unoaked and fermented in steel tanks to retain its streak of youthful fruit and vitality.
Albariño
Albariño is one of the most distinctive white wine grapes in Spain. Its heartlands are in Galacia, in Spain's rain- sodden north-west, and in Portugal`s Vinho Verde region, where it is known as Alvarinho and Cainho Branco. In the past, it was commonly mixed with other local grapes such as Loureiro, Godello, Caiño, Arinto or Treixadura to produce blended wines, but since the mid 1980s the grape's full potential has been realised and appreciated for single varietal bottlings.
Its thick skin enables it to withstand the damp climate of Galicia and the subsequent fruit is small, sweet and high in glycerol, producing wines high in alcohol and acidity.
High quality Albariño dominated wines are intensely aromatic and redolent of peaches, apricots and almonds on the palate. They have the ability to age gracefully and many growers are now experimenting with oak maturation. The finest Albariño wines come from the Rias Baixas DOC of Galicia. Albariño is also produced in California wine regions including the Santa Ynez Valley & Los Carneros AVAs.
When is a wine ready to drink?
We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.
Not ready
These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.
Ready - youthful
These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.
Ready - at best
These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.
Ready - mature
These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.
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Description
Full bottle 1,358 g. Tasted blind and tasted again (not blind) several times over several days. It was aged for 36 months on lees in stainless steel. Then, it was racked and aged in stainless steel until April 2023, when it was bottled.
When cold and in the first couple of days, the wine was smoky and so white-knuckle tense that it felt like a blow to the jaw. Bone on bone. Bitter. But day by day, it began to open; it was an extraordinary journey—day one: struck flint, lime pickle, a sulky sourpuss. By the time it had been open for a week, it was so heady, so floral, so aromatically luscious that if you'd handed me a glass without a word, I would have been confounded: Gewurz? Muscat? Viognier? Torrontés?
Too tense and sinew-stripped mineral for Gewurz. It's too terse and salty for Muscat. Too slim-waisted for Viognier. Too much steel-cut stone fruit for Torrontés. But rose petals. But clementine peel. But jasmine and black pepper. Candied lemon peel. Day 10: flowers and melted butter; golden gooseberries and mirabelle plums; grapefruit and bergamot. Diaphanous, perplexing. It is a moody, recalcitrant, capricious and utterly wonderful wine that proved to me that Albariño really can age.
Drink 2023 - 2035
Tamlyn Currin, JancisRobinson.com (August 2024)
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