Albarino do Ferreiro Cepas Velas, Gerardo Mendez

The nose of the 2023 Albariño Cepas Vellas is very austere, and it took a long time in the glass to take off. It has lower alcohol and more contained ripeness than its siblings, with a brighter color and a higher-pitched palate, serious and austere, like liquid granite to me. This is pure elegance and finesse in a year of great balance. 9,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in August 2024, a little later than the other 2023s. It should be very long lived. - Luis Gutierrez

The 2022 Albariño Cepas Vellas feels quite reductive and difficult to read on the nose. It took time to open up, but the palate showed the depth, balance and clout of the wine from minute one. It's dense and intense, with crystalline purity and great length, leaving a strong rocky sensation like the old vines really feed on the granite. - Luis Gutierrez

The 2018 Albariño Cepas Vellas has to be one of the finest vintages of this old-vine (reaaaaally old vine!) cuvée, in a vintage where the wine reached levels of elegance and harmony that I don't remember before. After having the wine in the glass for almost two hours, the nose was explosive, and the palate felt like bottled electricity, with effervescent acidity that makes you salivate, and it had incredible depth and concentration. They now tell me they think the vines could have been planted in 1785, in a property that had been a granite quarry, so I don't need to tell you what the soils are like here. This is a zone with a lot of fog, and that brings intense salinity to the wines. I need to dig out some bottles of 2010 I have somewhere in my cellar and check the evolution, because they tell me, and I agree, that this is a modern version of the 2010. - Luis Gutierrez

Testvinder Helt klart for ung. Tæt, intens frugt, lag på lag, østersskal galore, citrus, mineraler – og ja, netop til østers (og andre skaldyr) ville denne være et oplagt valg, meget bedre end champagne. Luksuriøs, knivskarp drik. - Niels Lillelund

A benchmark for the purity of Albariño fruit in Salnés, from vineyards between 50 and 200 years old. It’s fresh and lively, with flavours of apricot, peach, dried grass, spice and acacia, with roundness from 12 months’ lees ageing and a multi-layered finish. - Pedro Ballesteros Torres MW

You can see the complexity and depth of aromas as soon as you put your nose in the glass. Notes of waxy apples, fennel, aniseed (which Gerado says is one of the signs of a great vintage) and white apples emerge from the glass followed by a medium-bodied palate showing incredible concentration without feeling heavy. Everything here is more concentrated, including the acidity, it's a size (or three!) bigger than the Do Ferreiro, but all in balance and harmony. One of the greatest Albariños. Bravo!