In a Gadda da Vida Blanc 2020

In a Gadda da Vida Blanc 2020,

La Senda

La Bodega La Senda is the creation of Diego Losada, a native of El Bierzo, a region in the northwest of the province of León, bordered to the north by Asturias and to the west by Galicia. Pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela via the Camino Francés or the Camino de Invierno can admire its magnificent landscapes, where ancient vineyards cover the hilltops. Viticulture dates back to Roman times, but the region was so traumatized by the phylloxera crisis that vines were not replanted until the mid-20th century, without massive uprooting, giving these vines an average age of forty to seventy years. Born in Ponferrada, in the northern Bierzo region, Diego has never been one for compromise. A resolutely radical, with a passion for freedom and rigor, he first applied this disposition to music in the heavy metal band he formed with his high school classmates. He would later devote this same passion to wine, studying organic chemistry at university and learning the scientific aspects of viticulture. But the scientific rigidity and conventional methods he discovered on some of the estates where he worked did not satisfy him. Drawn to a viticulture closer to the land, Diego reclaimed a few plots to showcase the Bierzo terroir as naturally as possible. In 2012, he created the La Senda estate, whose name means "the path," on the outskirts of his hometown. His wines would be like him: honest, frank, natural, and expressive. Not awarded the designation of origin, they are the pure reflection of their soils and climate, of the personality and energy of their creator.
This wine, the only white from this estate, is composed of half Godello grapes, the rest being Doña Blanca, Palomino and Malvasia (Malvasia), all coming from several old plots whose vines are seventy to ninety years old. Added to all this is a small proportion of a mystery grape variety currently being identified by Diego. The vineyard is located in the north of Bierzo, on quartz-clayey limestone soils, at an altitude of 550 meters. The grapes macerate for ten days in old open oak and chestnut barrels, then the wine is aged in French oak barrels for five months. No filtration is done, no sulfites are added. This is a beautiful, thirst-quenching white with character, a golden color and notes of yellow fruits, very dry with a certain fatness and an oxidative note due to aging in open barrels. Its length in the mouth and its "fourth dimension" character justify the name of the cuvée: that of a song by the Californian group Iron Butterfly (1968) which, seventeen minutes long, launched the fashion for endless psychedelic pieces in the 70s. Serve well chilled as an aperitif, for example.
Natural wine with no added sulfites.