After offering you a first list of 5 documentaries about wine to watch for free on YouTubenow comes this article with three more documentaries focused specifically on the Galician wine. Between 2019 and 2020, Pablo Alonso Gonzalez and Eva Parga Dans premiered this trilogy in which they recounted the history of Galician wines and where most of the testimonies criticized the current situation regarding their designations of origin.
Especially that of Rías Baixas, which despite having a good reputation among the general public, has internal conflicts, from problems between the DO and the wineries, to the disappearance of various types of grapes to the benefit of the omnipresent albariño.
Pablo has raised the three documentaries to his YouTube channeland with almost four hours of content, we have more than enough to learn, without sugarcoating the story and with testimonies of all kinds (winemakers, viticulturists, ex-technicians of the designations of origin or wine distributors take part in the documentary), about one of the best-known wine-producing areas in Spain.
Albariño Rias Baixas: from tradition to the world
The first documentary in the trilogy focuses on the area of Low rivers and in its most famous grape: the Albariño.
Although it is sold to the public that Rias Baixas is a traditional Albariño area, the documentary makes it clear that Albariño began to gain strength in the 50s, a time when even red wines predominated over whites, but the boom of this grape and everyone began to change their strains and plant Albariño clones making the same wines but with different labelssince if you did not make that wine, you would not enter the DO, which was created in 1980.
It is very curious how many testimonials from winemakers and viticulturists speaking without mincing words and harshly criticizing this standardization, counting all the “traps” that the large wineries do to make their wines always the same, regardless of the vintage, in exaggerated volumes to be able to export as much as possible, at a price that is normally below production costs , and even throwing away grapes because they have grown too much.
The awakening of wine in Galicia: the return to terroir
The second documentary, which focuses on these new projects that intend to return to value the Galician terroirbegins with some very curious news that shook the world of wine: in 2012 it was discovered that the albariño vines planted in Australia they were actually savagnin, another white variety, something that revealed the standardization and similarity of flavors due to the excessive chemical treatments that are sometimes given to these wines.
In this documentary we see testimonies such as that of Alberto Nanclares and his albariño Crisopa, which was not admitted to the DO and is now considered a high-quality wine; or the one of send yourself, who make wines in the Ribeira Sacra area. We also travel to from Monterrey (there is not only firewood for Rías Baixas), where Albariño has also been planted although there was never this variety in that area, and abandoned varieties like the monstrous one from Monterrei.
Another demand included in the documentary is that of the partial wines, which try to value the towns and areas, and their differentiation between them, even though they have the same grape variety; and it is also denounced, by José Crusatfrom winery Adega Entre Os Ríosintegrating areas in the DO for political reasons and not for terroir.
Envino Veritas: Galicia from natural terroir
In the last part of the trilogy, the eternal debate that is increasingly hot is raised: natural wines, yes or no? By definition, natural wine is one in which human beings intervene as little as possible, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. Although in theory it seems easy, the fine line between minimal and not-so-minimal intervention is hard to seeand that makes this the part of the trilogy where there is more variety of opinions.
During the hour that the documentary lasts (this is the shortest of the three) we travel to the Ribeirothe most historic area of Galicia, which has also suffered the same problems as Rías Baixas, bringing palomino grapes to the area, simply to produce more wine.
In the feature film —it won the Best Documentary Award at Most, the International Wine Film Festival of 2022— intervenes Pilar Higuero, of Lagar de Sabarizwhich explains how the biodynamic wineIn her case, the A pita ciega, a wine considered cult (and difficult to find) that she herself labels by hand. One of the most curious facts that Pilar gives is that the average export price of Spanish wines is almost seven times less than that of Italy and ten times less than that of France. Quantity over quality. very spanish.
Other winemakers defend the intervention, since the Galician terroir is complicated and, sometimes, the work of many people is being played with, because if there is no harvest one year, there is no wine, and to avoid that, sometimes you have to intervene. What most of the interviewees agree on is the need to put the additives it contains on the wine labels, something that the rest of the bottled drinks do.
Despite being long documentaries with lots of information, it is worth viewing the three pieces, to see other realities outside of the typical ones that the sector always wants to show us. And, in addition, you do not have to be subscribed to any platform, just go to YouTube and press play.
2023-08-27 05:37:30
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