When you start a wine tasting with advice for an emergency escape route in case the boat starts sinking, you know that this will be a tasting with a difference. The long barge boat of London Shell Co was the setting for a tasting with one of the world’s top Albariño producers, Pazo de Señorans, and I was lucky enough to be invited on board.
As close to a maritime location you can get in London, the setting was ideal to showcase Albariño from Rias Baixas – renowned for its sea salt fresh character. We started with the 2016 vintage, the youngest, of their classic Albariño which was bursting with fresh peach notes, saline minerality and a bright acidity that carries on singing in your tongue while the delicate creamy notes of 5 months lees ageing gently hum underneath.
“The natural pairing for this wine is oysters”, says Javier Izurieta from Pazo de Señorans as the London Shell Co brought out a plate of enormous Irish oysters. Naturally, it hit the spot, but then oysters and white wine almost always do for me.
Fresh seafood and young Albariño do of course go hand in hand, but the secret to enjoying Pazo de Señorans wine is not in their youngest vintages but actually in the older ones. Even with the classic line, once you get passed five years in bottle the Albariño becomes an entirely different beast taking on rich nutty complexity atoned by the spine of acidity that lingers on the palate and pops its head up at the very finish.
During our afternoon tasting session on the boat we tasted Albariño wines from 2016 to 2001. Each had their own nuance and character, but one thing that remained was the dagger of acidity which showed me that, even at 16 years old, these wines are only just coming of age.
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Pazo de Señorans interview clip:
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The diversity & ageability of Albariño with Pazo de Señorans from Amanda Barnes on Vimeo.
Pazo de Señorans interview excerpt for the hearing impaired
Amanda Barnes: So tell me a bit about the ethos you have in Pazo, and why you think Albariño is a grape that ages well.
Javier Izurieta: So most people when they think about a white wine, they think its just fresh, and all that. With Albariño and in the winery the biggest wine is the young wine, the 2016 in this moment, but we think that Albariño has everything for ageing. So we have to keep some wine in bottles and that’s the reason that Pazo Señorans, we think it is our aim to show people that Albariño can be more than just a fresh wine. And when people ask me, which is the best one for you, it depends on for what. It’s not the same. Like today, if you finish the day with some oysters, ok give me the young wine! I am going to love that. But if we are talking about the meal that we got today with more complex food and sauces, the complexity of an older Albariño is amazing. And another point about the seed of the Albariño is that it is a really easy-going wine, so because it is a wine that if you present this wine on a table when there is wine lovers, they are all going to be happy because the complexity of a wine etc, but if you bring this wine to a table where no one drinks wine it is really easy drinking wine, so they are going to enjoy the wine. So I think the point of Albariño is that. You can bring a bottle to wine lovers or new consumers, and all of them are going to enjoy the wine. I think that’s the point of the Albariño.
And very unpretentious. Also another of your concepts is not using oak at any point. Even though these are wines that have aged for almost 20 years, can you tell us a bit about why you don’t use oak when you are ageing. You do a lot of lees work, it spends a lot of time on the ‘borras‘.
We make some experiments with oak but what we realised is two things – we were losing hte tipicity of the variety, because then you have to take care of the oak. And you have to be really good to work with oak. And if the oak has more presence than the Albariño, than the grape, we think that it is something wrong. And there is something nice about the Albariño, it is like the dryness is so high, in contact with the lees, so we get from the lees what the other varieties get from the oak. For us it is amazing, because it is just the variety against the world. Because with the oak you are getting outside factors, just to increase or give some notes to the wine. But with the lees we are just getting notes from the grape. So it is nothing but Albariño in the glass, so that’s really nice.
Fabulous. And Pazo, if I’m correct, means palace.
Pazo is like, the translation would be chateau. It’s like the rich, big house of the area but it is always related with the agriculture. Palace is sometimes more luxury than a working area. But Pazo is more related to the agriculture. The rich houses, but related with the agriculture.
What is the oldest wine that you have in your Pazo?
The oldest wine… the problem is that we don’t have really old wines. Probably the oldest wine we have is from 1997, or 1995. From the regular wine, and about Selecion Anada, I think probably a 1999, a couple of bottles of 99 left. But the vertical tastings, they are becoming very popular and everyone wants to go to Pazo to have more wine so that’s not unlimited you know! Right now we try to save more cases per vintage, but from the first wines we are totally out so that’s the problem.
So you’ve got to get it and stock it now!
Yeah. That’s what we say to people. Just get Pazo de Señorans, don’t be afraid. Keep it in bottle at home. The wine is going to get better. So keep it at home, but nobody wants to keep the wine!
Patience… it’s a lot of patience…
