Cuvée UGH Treixadura 2021 — A Stroll Through the Ribeiro

The first vintage of this wine, Cuvée UGH Treixadura, came to market in 2019. We brought you a tasting note some time ago, but we return to it today with a little more bottle age behind it. The name derives from Scottish Gaelic, where ugh means egg — a reference to the vessel in which it is made: a stoneware egg. The wine’s first vintage on its lees was produced in precisely that stoneware egg.

The project belongs to Javier Estévez Abeledo, who founded the winery in 2017 in the Avia Valley, in Beade (Ourense). He oversees the entire production process and practises environmentally respectful farming, free from systemic sulphates, herbicides and insecticides. His parents were always involved in growing and selling grapes in the Ribeiro area, and for Javier it is a matter of great pride to carry that legacy forward in wines with a character distinctly his own.

The wine sits outside the Ribeiro DO, as it is made from 80% Treixadura and 20% Branco Lexítimo, a variety not permitted within the denomination. The winemaking is highly distinctive: spontaneous fermentation lasting three months (the high sugar levels in the grapes slow the process considerably), after which the wine settles on its fine lees and spends nine months in the stoneware egg. This vessel allows no oxygen exchange whatsoever, and subjects the wine to considerable pressure through changes in temperature and lunar cycles. It is then filtered and bottled in September.

In the glass, it offers a very bright, clean straw yellow colour with greenish reflections and the occasional steely glint. On the nose it is quite intense and deep, with an abundance of white fruit, gentle tropical notes and a touch of citrus.

It is even better now than when we first tasted it.