Leirana Genoveva

Leirana Genoveva is Rodrigo Méndez's single-parcel Albariño, a step above the multi-village Leirana in the Forjas del Salnés range. Finca Genoveva is an old family plot in Barro, at the inland edge of Val do Salnés - about a hectare of pergola-trained, pre-phylloxera vines on sandy granite, planted in 1862 and counted among the oldest Albariño vineyards anywhere. Fermentation runs on native yeasts in a well-seasoned 2,500-litre oak foudre, where the wine stays on its lees for 12 months with no malolactic and minimal sulphur; around 6,000 bottles of the 2017 were filled in September 2018. 2017 was a warm, dry Galician year that largely spared Rías Baixas the April frost, and the wine carries it with 13% alcohol - a saline, quince-and-citrus Albariño whose foudre ageing reads as texture, not oak.