Pazo Señorans Albariño, Rías Baixas 2024

Galicia is home to some of Spain's best whites to drink with seafood. Albariño is the grape variety here and it makes a fragrant, intensely fruity dry white. No oak treatment is used, the wine is fermented and matured for 4 months in stainless steel . The result is a wine with concentrated and rich pear, peach, honeysuckle and white flower notes balanced with a crisp acidity which leads up to a taut mineral driven finish. Altogether wonderfully precise and complex.

Quite delicious all by itself and, naturally, a great paring with seafood. It also goes well with poultry and mushroom based vegetarian dishes.

Even though Pazo Señorans only started out in 1989 they are now considered among the top wine producers in Galicia's Rias Baixas DO. Ana Quintela Suárez, the winemaker, is fastidious in her approach, which could not be more pared back or simple. Having worked with the same growers over many years, there are no secrets to the success, it is all about the quality of the fruit. Ensuring that pristine grapes are achieved is key in this warm, humid climate. Such is the pervasive nature of the humid, briny air that the raised pergolas for training the grapes to ensure air movement are hewn from solid granite. Pressing is followed by a natural fermentation in stainless steel which helps to retain the exuberant fruit character, while the following ageing on lees helps develop texture and spice on the resulting wines.