Castro Candaz is the Ribeira-Sacra appellation project from Raúl Pérez and his close friend and collaborator Rodri Méndez. While Raúl’s two most famous Ribeira Sacra bottlings, La Penitencia and El Pecado, come from the Amandi district of the appellation, the fruit for these wines comes from Chantada. In Chantada, the Sil River widens, the slopes become less steep and the soils feature more granite than slate. It is also notably cooler than the Amandi area. “If we were going to try to make wines here like El Pecado and La Penitencia,” Raúl explains, “we would harvest later due to the lower temperatures. But the idea of this project is to keep the wines at 13% alcohol or less, so we actually harvest earlier than we do in Amandi.”
This is a kitchen sink blend of Mencía, Domingo Pérez (Trousseau), Garnacha Tintorera (Alicante Bouschet), Mouratón, Caiño and Brancellao from a few different sites within the Chantada and Ribeira do Miño zones of the Ribeira Sacra appellation. It was fermented with whole clusters in foudre and aged in a combination of foudre and 500L used barrels.