The Way of Sparkling Albariño

Rías Baixas has allowed sparkling wines within the DO since 2009, but very few wineries make it. As Champagne’s price skyrockets and Cava goes to war with itself, espumoso might be the middle path of the moment for bubbly.

Somewhere between almost faceplanting into a tower of empanadas on the bar and being greeted by the event host with a hearty “Hey, party people!”, complete with air-horn noises, I understood that the messaging from the Consejo Regulador of DO Rías Baixas at their recent Albariño roadshow in Boston was focused on fun. 

At first blush, it seemed reasonable enough to me. Albariño is a screamingly acidic, aromatic white grape native to Galicia, where Rías Baixas is located; the bulk of it is made into unfussy, crisp white wines with a bunch of fruit flavor and a hint of ocean salinity, the sort of thing that plays nice with the region’s bounty of excellent seafood. Alongside the obligatory pictures of vineyards, the press kit for the event foregrounded shots of young people partying, plates of mussels, and well-tattooed chefs. To the DO, it was endless summer, and everyone was invited.

But as I started tasting, it quickly became clear that the assembled producers were much more interested in their Serious Wines: ones with years of lees contact, five to ten years of bottle age, or maturation in oak barrique—the kind of barrel you generally keep far away from aromatic white wines. They were geeky, experimental, and the absolute last thing you’d think of cracking open on the beach.

And so, for me, the event seemed at odds with itself. The DO had its dream of summer fun; the producers brought wines that asked you to stay indoors with a tasting notebook close at hand. The tourist versus the MW, so to speak. Is there really no way to have both?

A single wine at the event made me believe that we could: a sparkling Albariño.

This style is exceedingly rare—only something like twenty producers in the region make it—but it’s perfectly legal within appellation rules and has been for over fifteen years (it was included in 2009). “DO Rías Baixas Espumoso,” the formal name of the category, has relatively lax requirements by sparkling wine standards. It can be either white or red, but is usually white; it must be made by secondary bottle fermentation, the so-called “traditional method”; it must have perceptible lees-related aromas, the provided examples being “bakery” and “toasted”; and it must have well-integrated bubbles. There is no minimum lees contact time nor minimum aging requirement, though most producers do considerable amounts of both.

Mario Alfageme Sacristán of Paco & Lola, the sole producer that had an espumoso available at the tasting, was vehement that bottle fermentation was key to the style because it produced “elegant” bubbles. Every espumoso producer there said the same. Galicia gets a lot of sun—over 2,000 hours during the growing season—and because albariño is naturally so high in acid, it makes an optimal base for bottle fermentation. As Miguel Posada Gonzalez of Bodegas Eidolesa, which makes an espumoso, explained to me, these features allow the wine to hold onto its varietal character while developing a mousse and lees flavor that would overwhelm other grapes.

However, when I asked about it, the winemakers who didn’t already have an espumoso on offer weren’t particularly keen on starting. They were hesitant not because they didn’t believe in the product, necessarily, but because they didn’t think they could compete on price with Cava, that better-known Spanish sparkler. At roughly $30 a bottle, Rías Baixas espumoso is often two to three times as expensive as entry-level Cava. I overheard two different groups of restaurant reps during the event say that Cava “sells itself.” In other words, what’s the point when there’s a cheaper alternative?

But Cava itself doesn’t seem comfortable with that market position. As Jason Wilson described in a recent article for Wine Enthusiast, the DO is in a state of internecine war, with many prominent winemakers departing the appellation for new quality- and place-focused trade associations like Corpinnat in Penedès. At the event, Andres Harmsen Corcuera of Aviva Wines described Cava as “basically a commodity,” which doesn’t sound like a great spot to be when the current downturn in the wine market is hurting bulk, low-cost products the most.

But it would be a shame if we focused so much on the business dynamics that we forgot the wine itself, which is really good. Paco & Lola’s Espumoso Brut had the creamy, well-integrated mousse and the bready flavors of lees contact (two years, and a year of bottle maturation thereafter) the regulations say it should have. But the thing that really grabbed me by the collar, what compelled me, was its honey flavor. It was rich, dark, and heathered, almost caramel in its bite, reminding me more distinctly of mānuka honey than any other thing I’ve tasted—even a lot of mānuka honey itself. Yet the wine wasn’t heavy or brooding. It was buoyed by its acid and the Albariño’s typical stone fruit flavor gave it lightheartedness, like a honey-glazed peach just taken off the grill.

This is what sparkling wine is supposed to be, though, isn’t it? A wine with serious winemaking chops and a historically laborious, time-consuming production process that we’ve collectively decided is our wine of celebration. We sometimes open it by whacking the top off with a sword. It’s as happy being drunk from Australian former Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo’s shoe as it is from luxe crystal. It’s serious and joyous in exactly equal measure. 

As brand-name Champagne’s ever-climbing price seems to take reverence for granted and Cava desperately tries to claw its way out of its bottom-shelf image, we might have lost our sense of that balance. But Rías Baixas espumoso gets it. It’s not for nothing that the winery Mar de Frades’s espumoso is a Brut Nature—unsweetened and bracing—and has a little picture of a boat on the label that appears when the wine is cold enough to drink, the vino equivalent of the mountains on a can of Coors Light. It remembers to be fun while keeping up its deeply serious production chops. In our increasingly extractive economy, as things get either worse or more expensive (or both), sparkling albariño—a delightful product of place that’s still within reach for most of us—might just be the middle way we need.