As someone who has written a wine column for almost a decade and who has been tasting wines on the radio for nearly a decade before that, it’s slightly embarrassing that I have never been to “wine country.” Yes, I’ve visited several vineyards and wineries around New England, but one would be hard-pressed to consider anywhere in our six-state region as “wine country.” Apple country? Asparagus country? Absolutely. But not wine country. I haven’t even been to the Finger Lakes Region of New York, which is the closest wine country to us here in the 413. That all changed this past July.
Amid the backdrop of Spain v. Argentina in the World Cup Final, I found myself in España, in the autonomous community of Galicia, which includes the Spanish wine region of Rías Baixas. Rías Baixas translates to “lower rivers” in the Galician language of Galego. The province of Pontevedra is enclosed by the estuaries known as Rías Baixas. Rías Baixas is famous for a grape that has become wildly popular in the United States: Albariño. A light, refreshing white wine grape, Albariño has become synonymous with summer sipping stateside. I’m a fan. And I was quite excited to finally experience a real wine country.
The trouble was, something was up with my wife’s tummy. She is a Spanish lecturer at Smith College and had landed in Spain a week before me to do some professional development. When we hit the road from where she was studying in Santiago de Compostela to Pontevedra, she was barely over a tremendous stomach-something of unknown origin. This put a major damper on our eating and drinking plans. Undaunted, and filled with marital team spirit, she led the charge to a small wine house along the Ruta de Rías Baixas to the city of Cambados and the bodega called Seixido.
On the drive along the “Route of Rías Baixas,” you can see grapes growing everywhere. Like with so many industries across the globe, there are major players in Rías Baixas and there are the underdogs. The major players are growing Albariño wherever land is available: traditional large vineyard sites, along highways and even in the tiny backyards of the people living in Pontevedra.
Imagine if you were driving through Holyoke, and everyone who had a backyard, even people in apartments, were growing grapes. The landscape was covered in incredible canopies of vines, trellised along a pergola system, creating 6- to 7-foot shaded mini-pavilions all across the countryside. Some of these major players of Albariño that you might have heard of are Martín Códax and Paco & Lola. But even the underdogs we visited appreciate the major players who surround them.
“They are buying grapes from lots of small farms,” said Evaristo Daporta, co-owner of the small bodega, Seixido Wines.
What I like about underdogs like Seixido is that they are usually more interesting than the major players.
Evaristo and his sister, co-owner and winemaker Paris Daporta, welcomed my wife and me (along with three young travelers from Barcelona) to their family home. Their family has been making wine here for longer than the U.S. has been a country. Proudly displayed in their tasting room is a wooden wine press that dates from sometime in the 1700s. They don’t use this particular press anymore, but Seixido is not averse to using antiquated techniques to capture the flavors they are after.
One of the first things Evaristo told us about how his sister makes wine is that she “listens to the grapes.” There is somewhat of a sibling rivalry when it comes to who thinks the Albariño should be harvested when. But Evaristo defers to Paris when it comes to grapes. After all, they speak to her. Evaristo is the de facto face of the bodega. He gives the tours, while Paris prepares the spread. The food to pair with the wines included cheeses, sliced hams and one of the few dishes popular all over Spain — tortilla. Tortilla to most of us in the States means the base of a taco, but in Spain it’s essentially a giant, fluffy omelet-style potato, egg and ham pie.
Evaristo took us through what wine snobs call a “vertical,” where we taste the same style of wine but from different years. We tasted a 2025, a 2021 and a 2019. My wife liked the young one. I thought the ’25 was a little premature but was fresh and fun. The ’19 felt too old and lacked some zip. But the ’21 was, as Goldilocks would say, “just right.” The 2021 also spent 36 months on the lees, or dead yeasts, which gave it a richer quality than the others. The entirety of Paris’ spread paired perfectly with all the wines we sampled.
With Seixido’s history going back hundreds of years, it’s not surprising that many of their practices remain very traditional. They don’t use that 1700s press or cover the vats with giant fig leaves like in the olden days. But they still use the same wine press they were using in the 1950s. Evaristo said the new wine presses have plastic parts, and he wants his wines to be microplastic-free.
“Easier to battle bacteria on the wood. I can’t remove microplastics,” he told us.
On a more contemporary bent, the wines are vegan. While some wines are filtered and clarified through egg whites or fish bladders, Seixido filters through paper. The wines are not quite organic. Due to seasons of heavy rains, they need to find ways to control the problems that come with too much moisture. But they keep the chemicals to a minimum.
I brought two bottles home from the bodega: the one my wife liked best and the one I liked best. I’m glad I did. Seixido is such a small operation that their wines are not currently available in Massachusetts. However, there are many affordable and delicious expressions of Albariño widely available in virtually all of your favorite local wine shops. The bottles I bought were sleeved for us in cloth bags. And instead of packaging them with extra paper, they inserted a laurel branch to keep the bottle from rolling around.
“You can use this to cook when you get home,” Evaristo said.
Evaristo told us that, in Spain, “Beer is for drinking. Wine is for food.” Paris and Evaristo’s mother was an oyster farmer. They have a prominently displayed picture of her doing her oyster work. These wines would be dynamite with oysters. Evaristo is proud of the females of the family, especially his sister. “More and more women are getting into wine. It brings balance. We’re all human,” Evaristo said.
My wife and I left the Daporta family’s traditional Galician home, drove back through the canopied countryside and the backyard vineyards along the Ruta de Rías Baixas and prepared to watch Spain decimate Argentina in the World Cup Final. The day after the final, we would leave for the second wine region I would ever visit: Porto, Portugal. Birthplace of Port and home of Albariño’s twin sister, Alvarinho, in the region of Vinho Verde.
But remember that mystery tummy trouble I told you my wife was experiencing? I would soon be looking for “any port in a storm” in Porto. Did we manage to steal a wine-region-vacation from the jaws of explosive diarrhea? That, dear reader, is for the next column.