2018 El Erial

The style of the 2018 El Erial de Valdecañada is more what Raúl Pérez was looking for, a lot fresher, from the coolest part of El Bierzo, a zone at 800 meters in altitude. This wine is the result of looking for a cool-climate white on slate soils in the zone of Ponferrada in the village of Valdecañada with moderate alcohol. It has notes of hay, straw and spices and moderate alcohol (around 12%) in a very cold vintage, almost opposite from the 2015 I tasted next to this. But both wines have the textured palate and the salty tastiness. There is only one 225-liter barrel and 300 bottles of this, produced form the same individual plants of Godello found interplanted in the vineyard, as most of the white grapes in the zone are Palomino. The idea is to regraft some Palomino to Godello.