Antonio Montero’s winery was established three generations ago and is located in the heart of the Ribeiro DO, 45km east from the Atlantic Ocean in Galicia. All the labor in the vineyards is done manually, the vines being on hillsides and small plots. The use of terraces (known locally as socalcos or bocaribeiras) is common in the Ribeiro DO, as the slopes can be very steep. The main vineyards are on the slopes of ‘Coto de Novelle’ on the left bank of the Miño river, as well as as a bunch of small plots such as ‘A Ponte’, ‘O Quinteiro’, ‘Fonte Quente’, ‘La Calzada’ etc. The soil is mostly clay and sand but with variations from plot to plot.
The winery works only with native varieties such as Treixadura, Palomino, Mencía, Brancellao, Caínho, Sousón and Ferrón. The rule is minimal intervention in winemaking; only native yeasts are used, and the wines are not filtered, only decanted by gravity. The wines are pure, steeped in a long tradition of Galician winemaking.
The soils are deep (between 70 and 100 cm) and basically of granitic origin with a significant content of stones and gravel which improve the structure of the soil and reflect sunlight onto the vines. The climate is at a transition zone between oceanic and Mediterranean, humid and temperate, with average annual temperatures of 14.5 °C. Average annual rainfall is high (950 mm) though it can be very sparse in the summer.
The Colleita is a young white blend of native white grapes Treixadura and Palomino fermented completely in thermo-regulated stainless steel. O Alborexar - Galician for “the awakening” - is 100% Mencia. The hand-harvested grapes are destemmed, softly crushed for a short maceration, before the alcoholic fermentation in 3000-liter truncated conical steel tanks for a minimum of 10 days. This is followed by a soft pressing in a manual vertical press after which the wine is returned to the tanks for the malolactic fermentation. Finally the wine is racked by gravity and bottled without fining or filtration.
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