Resistencia Viticulturista, Antonio Portela - Nemo 2022

White wine.

Full, Mineral, Elegant.

If you are a fan of Albariño then this is the wild child you didn't know you needed to try. This is some serious underground wine!

Antonio Portela, with his project Resistencia Viticulture, is a master of the wild children as it would seem. He has struck out from the beaten path, unconcerned with what the regulators and bureaucrats say and is making his wines the way he sees fit and where he sees fit.

Antonio has long been in the wine game as a writer and general enthusiast but also as the founder of the Galician wine fair 'A Emoción Dos Viños'. His adventures in winemaking started up when a vineyard near to his house and right up against a beautiful Galician beach fell into disuse. Antonio petitioned the owners to start caring for the vines himself, which they allowed. He began with this plot but soon acquired a number of other vineyards, all in very obscure coastal locations in sandy soils up and down the peninsula where he lives.

What makes all this most special and interesting is that he's one of the few if not the only one doing it in this particular spot. The peninsula is known as the Peninsula de Morrazo and it sits directly below the famed Val do Salnés of the Rías Baixas region. For some reason though, it is not included within the limits of the Rías Baixas region despite having very similar conditions to the aforementioned Val do Salnés. 

It is for this reason that Antonio is an outlier making wine from established vineyards that refuse to fit the mould.

This particular wine is from 20 year old, ungrafted vines that are planted at the base of the Peninsula de Morrazo on the southern side where the vineyard is exposed to the cool breezes of the Ria de Vigo.

To make the wine, the skins were macerated in the juice for 12 hours pre-ferment before a manual pressing. The wine was then fermented and left to rest over the lees for a period of 12 months in steel tanks.