The 2016 Bastardo, which is the local name for Trousseau, wants to show the varietal character in a warm zone like Monterrei. It was sourced from 20-year-old vines on clay and sandstone soils. The uncrushed grapes fermented with indigenous yeasts in open-top barrels and matured in 400-liter oak barrels for 12 months. It's super young and austere, with a tight nose, in need of some time in bottle. The palate reveals some of the rustic tannins, but they are fine-grained. This is a little more rustic and austere. It comes from a lower part of Monterrei and behaves better in the mountain part, where the plants are intermixed in the old vineyards and it has more acidity and better freshness. All in all, this is quite impressive and should get polished with some more time in bottle. 2,200 bottles were filled in August 2018.

The next vintage after the 2011 is the 2015 Bastardo. Made from the grape known in Jura as Trousseau, it was cropped from a very balanced vintage from a vineyard planted 23 years ago on red clay and sandy soils. It has varietal character, with a slightly shy nose but a much more expressive palate. It fermented in open stainless steel with full clusters and indigenous yeasts and with a very soft extraction to avoid too much tannin, which can be a problem, especially from lower altitude vineyards. There is contained ripeness and a soft mouthfeel, with very fine tannins. 1,3000 bottles.

One of the few varietals produced with the finicky grape in Galicia, the 2011 Bastardo is pure Bastardo/Merenzao/Trousseau from slate soils at 470 meters altitude in a slightly warmer zone (and a warmer vintage). The full clusters fermented in an open vat with indigenous yeasts and it was foot trodden. The wine matured in stainless steel before being put in barrel for six months. It seems a bit darker than other vintages, and it also shows unusual aromas of ripe red and black fruit with spices. It is quite juicy, tasty and flavorful, halfway between Mediterranean and Atlantic styles showing good volume with moderate acidity. It is an atypical Bastardo, but a very good red. Only 500 bottles were produced.

The 2008 Bastardo was by far my favorite of these varietal/experimental bottlings. Bastardo is nothing other than Trousseau from Jura, and while I find many examples in Galicia really different from the ones from Jura, this one shares a few characteristics; quite light-colored, with a high-pitched nose dominated by red fruits and Mediterranean herbs and a spicy touch, something of a contradiction as 2008 was what he defined as “the last of the true Atlantic vintages.” The palate shows a light to medium-bodied wine, with clean, delineated acidity, very fine, polished tannins and pure flavors, a bit herbaceous, bitter and savage. Again, a wine of marked personality. Drink 2013-2019. Quinta da Muradella was created in 1993 by Jose Luis Mateo with 15 hectares of owned vineyards in different zones of the Monterrei appellation, some on the valley floor, some on the slopes and some others in the mountain zones where some vineyards reach 100 years of age. He works 20 different plots. All his vineyards are organically certified. He makes a total of 40,000 bottles per year, and experiments with different grapes, different zones, fermenting and aging vessels (wood, stainless steel, concrete) trying to understand the region and the grapes and what works best. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand the process he uses to make some of the wines, and you’ll see that he moves the wines from inox to barrel, from cement to whatever, in what seems to be quite a complicated operation. Some things work and some don’t. He makes varietal wines to examine the different grapes and their potential, he tries different blends, and his ultimate idea is to identify the ideal blend of ancient varieties, the ones that were planted in the region before phyloxera, not only to make the wine, but to plant those varieties already mixed in the vineyard. His collection of wines is completely different from the rest of the wines produced in the appellation. If you ever visit Verin, which has a beautiful old town center and an impressive castle, you should make sure you visit the Mateo family’s bar, A Canteira (the name comes from their father who was a canteiro, a stone mason), where they serve their own house wine, both white and red, made by Jose Luis. It is the best house wine I’ve ever tried in a restaurant. The locals just don’t know how lucky they are. About the person himself, Jose Luis Mateo is extremely humble, a quality I find in the best people across different professions – very generous with his time and everything else. He’s passionate about what he’s doing, and he considers his work a long-term project to bring value and quality to the wines of his region, “hoping that someone will take over and continue the things that I’m doing,” he said. When I asked him what he’d change if he could start again he was very clear. “I’d focus on the mountain vineyards,” he told me. I asked what if it had to be somewhere else in Galicia? “To me the place would be Ribeiro.” And now for something completely different! Jose Luis has been making a range of varietal red wines that he was reluctant to show, since quantities are sometimes tiny, but I found some of them too good not to talk about them; some are also non-DO wines declassified to the Vino de Mesa category. Importer: Ole Imports. New Rochelle, NY; tel. (914) 740-4724