This three part posting, over the next few days is actually quite interesting…. I think! You may have noticed that every bottle we sell has the official Rias Baixas denomination sticker on the back, denoting that the wine has been tasted, and passed, by the official tasting committee of the D.O. Every tank of wine produced in our region has to undergo this process before it can be bottled, of course meaning that every single tank has to be tasted! I should perhaps mention that the official sticker is known locally as the ‘tirilla’, and I have inset an example in the corner of today’s photo. (Tirilla comes from the word tira, which means strip (as in label) or band – tirilla means small strip).

The process starts when a tank of wine is ready for bottling – but this has to be planned well in advance as the approval process can take up to 2 or 3 weeks (especially at busy times of year). The first step is that the bodega has to send a sample drawn from the tank to an official, government accredited laboratory for analysis. Depending on proximity of the cellar to the lab will determine how long this takes, but usually between 2 and 4 days. Once the bodega has the analysis in hand, it can then notify the D.O. office in Pontevedra, who will send a member of their technical team to draw six bottles from the tank to be tasted. When the sample is taken, a seal is put on the tank, as well as on the six bottles – one of the bottles is left in the bodega as a reference. Normally the D.O. will collect the sample within a few days of asking, but at peak times this can extend to one or two weeks. There is no doubt that the busiest time of year is during the build up to the harvest, simply because bodegas often need to empty tanks to accommodate the new wine coming in. Under normal circumstances the D.O. would hold one or two official tastings a week, but at harvest time, this can increase to daily tastings in order to keep up with the high demand.

When the sample bottles arrive at the D.O. office, a second sample is immediately sent to the official D.O. laboratory for analysis, and in this way it can be compared to the analysis supplied by the bodega, to ensure that they are indeed, one and the same! Once this is done the sample bottle can finally be put before the tasting panel.

All tasters on the panel are obviously experienced people (often Rias Baixas winemakers), but they are still tutored and have to undergo assessment to ensure that they are not only up to scratch, but also that they are completely objective, and rate all wines in a similar way, using the official tasting scale. There are always a minimum of 5 official tasters on each tasting panel, and as you may guess, the tasting is always conducted completely blind.This three part posting, over the next few days is actually quite interesting…. I think! You may have noticed that every bottle we sell has the official Rias Baixas denomination sticker on the back, denoting that the wine has been tasted, and passed, by the official tasting committee of the D.O. Every tank of wine produced in our region has to undergo this process before it can be bottled, of course meaning that every single tank has to be tasted! I should perhaps mention that the official sticker is known locally as the ‘tirilla’, and I have inset an example in the corner of today’s photo. (Tirilla comes from the word tira, which means strip (as in label) or band – tirilla means small strip).

The process starts when a tank of wine is ready for bottling – but this has to be planned well in advance as the approval process can take up to 2 or 3 weeks (especially at busy times of year). The first step is that the bodega has to send a sample drawn from the tank to an official, government accredited laboratory for analysis. Depending on proximity of the cellar to the lab will determine how long this takes, but usually between 2 and 4 days. Once the bodega has the analysis in hand, it can then notify the D.O. office in Pontevedra, who will send a member of their technical team to draw six bottles from the tank to be tasted. When the sample is taken, a seal is put on the tank, as well as on the six bottles – one of the bottles is left in the bodega as a reference. Normally the D.O. will collect the sample within a few days of asking, but at peak times this can extend to one or two weeks. There is no doubt that the busiest time of year is during the build up to the harvest, simply because bodegas often need to empty tanks to accommodate the new wine coming in. Under normal circumstances the D.O. would hold one or two official tastings a week, but at harvest time, this can increase to daily tastings in order to keep up with the high demand.

When the sample bottles arrive at the D.O. office, a second sample is immediately sent to the official D.O. laboratory for analysis, and in this way it can be compared to the analysis supplied by the bodega, to ensure that they are indeed, one and the same! Once this is done the sample bottle can finally be put before the tasting panel.

All tasters on the panel are obviously experienced people (often Rias Baixas winemakers), but they are still tutored and have to undergo assessment to ensure that they are not only up to scratch, but also that they are completely objective, and rate all wines in a similar way, using the official tasting scale. There are always a minimum of 5 official tasters on each tasting panel, and as you may guess, the tasting is always conducted completely blind.