Almalarga Godello 2023

For those unfamiliar with Ribeira Sacra and / or Roberto Flammini (which I am guessing covers everyone in the continental U.S.), I think there are two important waypoints to approaching this wine.

First, it’s really great drinking. I mean great drinking in the sense that you pop open the bottle and there is a ton to enjoy. Ribeira Sacra wines offer a beautiful mélange of Bosc pear, white peach, grapefruit, quince and a bit of lemon zest. In other words, it’s fruity, but I should note not too fruity – the palate is vibrant, fresh, and bright, without being extremely acidic. It carries all of the vivid minerality of a Chablis, without being piercing. The finish is extremely lengthy, riding on its vivid mineral character, and never forceful. It drinks so fresh that feeling it slip down is an absolute pleasure.

You’ll notice I keep calling it Ribeira Sacra, the place, instead of Godello, the grape. Godello is far more well known than Ribeira Sacra or Roberto Flammini, but I think the latter two are more important, if more complicated. This wine is a blend of Godello, Treixadura, and a little Albarino, and Roberto is a winemaking hero.

The second waypoint to approaching this wine is through the vineyards. I’ll always remember how Roberto Flammini welcomed me to his tiny winery: “I promise, I am not trying to kill you.” What a gentleman!

We had just climbed the tiniest of dirt roads high up in Ribeira Sacra, truly a scary climb for this not-so-rugged indoorsmen. And he was offering a tour of the vineyards – a 45-degree slope down 1,000 meters to the river. A tremendous plunge. Pictures can’t do it justice but maybe this allusion will – the vineyard has to be terraced to an extreme degree: after each row of vines, a terrace rises 8 feet tall, before the next row. Imagine if your front yard had a two foot strip of grass, then an 8 foot wall, then another strip, and so on and so forth, up an entire mountainside. Roberto calls this heroic farming and, having seen his home, I agree. 

Of course, the best way to learn about this wine is to just to keep drinking it with the absolute freshest shellfish you can find prepared in the simplest way – scallops seared so quickly they are still quivering from the grill, when you pour olive oil on them. Razor clams broiled and juiced with lemon and sea salt and that’s all—or clams sautéed for mere minutes in olive oil with a tomato crushed through your bare hand right above them. If all that is too much trouble, just grab yourself the highest quality canned seafood you can and a pack of Saltines. I’m serious! Have a dinner party in this fashion and blow your friends away. Still too much work? Just drink the damn thing and imagine the accompaniments. It’s that delicious.

Now a note about the price – I was introduced to some of the top Ribeira Sacra producers by a very intrepid client years ago. As things go in the wine industry, the world found out about these magical wines, and the top one or two producers are snapped up on allocation and simply nothing ever remains –at prices that verge on $100 a bottle.

I believe this producer belongs among that top echelon of the region. But you’ll notice that it’s not $100 a bottle.

That’s because I was there, and as a merchant I am buying this wine as “direct” as Wisconsin law will allow. Cutting out two middlemen is the entire reason this wine is on offer at this price. Try it, fall in love with it as I have, and know that you are drinking one of the best – for far, far less.