5 minutes with… Olga Verde, technical director, Lagar de Fornelos

The 2021 was our first Lindeiros vintage. La Rioja Alta is an expert in aged wines. They looked for years and years around how to make a great white wine with the potential to be aged the same as our reds. It took five years to find what was our best plot to make an aged white wine. After many experiments, in 2021 we did Lindeiros. The wine comes from Troviscoso. It’s a plot that we have in Cambados, and it is our oldest vineyard, planted in 1987, which is quite old in terms of Rías Baixas. We decided to try different vessels and materials to ferment and to age: 50% stainless steel, 25% concrete egg and 25% 500-litre, second-use French barriques. We age it for 12 months and keep it in bottle for at least one more year. 2022 was the warmest and driest vintage that we can remember in Rías Baixas. I used to think the best vintages to age white wines were fresh ones like 2021. But now I don’t think the same. After drinking very old white wines, I am realising that warm and dry years have the potential to age well because they have a lot of structure. We have the acidity even if the year is warm. If you try both, 2022 is more powerful and full bodied. We work with the same philosophy, so everything we did for 2021 and 2022 in the winery we did in the same way.