WINERY: Telmo Rodriguez
GRAPES: Godello & Others
REGION: Valdeorras
Organic wine
 
“The 2018 Branco de Santa Cruz was cropped from a cool year with snowand rain when the grapes were picked onthe usual dates, starting the 20th of September. It reveals a shy, austere andelegant nose, slowly developing notes of white flowers, herbs and peach with atouch of lanolin, perhaps the sharpest vintage so far. It’s a white of finesse. 5,952 bottles were filled in May 2020.”– Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
 
“Branco de Santa Cruz is an authentic Galician single-village wine. “Branco,” which means white in Gallego, comes from vineyards scattered throughout the village of Santa Cruz in O Bolo county, located in the Val do Bibei in the southern part of the Valdeorras appellation. A blend of old godello, treixadura, doña blanca, and palomino varieties from traditional co-planted, bush-trained vines on granitic soil, locally called sábrego. Terraced vineyards perched between 400 to 600 meters above the Bibei river are planted on steep slopes facing south, west, and northwest.
 
Branco de Santa Cruz shows off godello’s textural similarities with white Burgundy; however, it comes across as more Mediterranean, with aromatic herbs, white flowers, hay, and honeycomb, with good volume and balanced acidity.
 
Viticulture is organic, and the grapes are hand-harvested. Wines are made with low intervention and minimal sulfur at bottling. Branco de Santa Cruz is extremely limited. Vinification - Following a manual harvest, fermentation begins spontaneously with native yeasts in oak barrels and foudres of various sizes. The wine is then aged for ten months in these same vessels before bottling.