Casal Caeiro Albariño ‘ Sobre Lias’, Rías Baixas, Spain

Casal Caeiro was established in 1986, in the coolest section of the Rías Baixas DO, where the fashionable Albariño grape flourishes. From the outset, the winery incorporated several advanced features that are now more widespread, such as stainless steel storage tanks and a three- storey design that allows gravity flow to replace pumping.

There are eleven hectares of vineyards, between twenty-one and fifty- one years old, trained on pergolas to help with air circulation and prevent the build-up of moisture to which 1700mm of rain per year can lead. The soils are sandy on granite and quartz subsoils. Grapes are hand-harvested into twenty-kilo baskets and then hand-sorted in the cellar.

Sobre Lias

Translated, it means ‘on the lees’. It is an extended ageing process that is applied to all of the vineyard’s wines. Fine lees are the exhausted  yeast cells left over from fermentation that intensifies the wines by adding richness, flavour and aroma complexity.

Specific proteins are released naturally during lees contact and it is these that create a creamy, silky mouthfeel and texture to the body of the wine.  The lees also enhances stability and increases the ageing potential of the wines.

After a gentle pneumatic pressing, the wine underwent an extended cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks.