2020 Vinedos de Gabian Xanledo

"Through 2017, Pepiño’s flagship wine ‘Xanledo’ carried the Ribeiro appellation of origin. By now, his very limited bureaucratic time as a one-man operation has led him to drop that mention and rest on the strength of the juice in the glass. Said juice consists primarily of Brancellao with smaller quantities of two different varieties of the coastal red specialty Caíño, as well as some Espadeiro. Fermentations proceed spontaneously in neutral wood—the Brancellao in open-top 500L barrels, while the other grapes typically only fill a single foudre. Having already revealed that his C.V. includes time in Raúl Pérez’s winery, it is not surprising that Pepiño prefers fermenting whole bunches of grapes. Macerations tend to last around a month—not quite as long as his mentor, perhaps, but plenty of time to extract the perfectly-balanced, shimmering structural architecture to support the wine’s weightlessly intense panoply of just-ripe fruit."