2012 Do Ferreiro Albariño

Manuel Méndez told me he thinks the 2012 Albariño has some similarities with the 2014 vintage, but I saw more harmony here, even if the nose seems to be moving in the same direction, and showing more similarities with the 2011, which had a different palette of aromas. They had to do a severe selection, and the Cepas Vellas was not bottled in a cool and rainy vintage that had a massive attack of oidium and mildew ("I had never seen mildew in August, until 2012", he told me). But the wine is evolving very nicely in bottle, with a textbook nose of bottle-aged Albariño. The palate is sharp and austere, representing the vintage conditions very faithfully. Of course, they never put their wines through malolactic, to keep the character of the year. They only bottled some 35,000 liters in this vintage, which resulted in 46,000 bottles. 2008 was also a vintage in this style—very cold—and they did not bottle Cepas Vellas that year either.