Memorable wines of 2025: Part one
Spanish Wine Collective writers reflect on a memorable bottle they uncorked in 2025.
Adrian McManus and Alan Nance get us underway.
Brancellao 2024, Adega Terras Do Sur
DO: Rias Baixas
Variety: Brancellao
Terras do Sur Brancellao 2024 is an Atlantic red from the Condado do Tea sub-zone of Rías Baixas, more or less straddling the border with Ribeiro. Made by Pepe Canda at his small, family-run winery in A Cañiza, Pontevedra, this wine is 100% Brancellao, a historic Galician variety once close to extinction. Planting Brancellao in A Cañiza, where it remains quite scarce, reflects a strong commitment to recovering local identity, which here is accompanied by a precise, modern winemaking approach
The 2024 colleita, or vintage, presents a bright, translucent cherry-red colour with violet tones, signalling freshness rather than extraction. On the nose, it’s elegant and nuanced, with salvos of red cherry, raspberry and wild strawberry, complemented by lovely floral notes of violet and dried rose petal. There’s also an undertow of subtle herbal hints, namely bay leaf, fennel and Atlantic undergrowth/scrub. Add to that a level of complexity showing a discreet mineral edge from the area’s granite soils and well-integrated oak, you soon realise you have a most compelling wine in your hands.
On the palate, it’s medium-bodied, finely structured and lithe, driven by vibrant acidity that brings tension and length. Tannins are fine-grained and polished, allowing the red-fruit profile to remain clear and precise through to a somewhat saline finish so typical of the wines in the wild north-west.
In short, this is a supremely terroir-driven red that prioritises elegance, freshness and terroir—a riveting expression of Brancellao for fans of vignerons like Pepe. It’s also a wine that you can happily lay down too.
Adrian McManus
Pepe Canda with the Terras Do Sur Brancellao
Lousas Camiño Novo 2023, Envínate
No DO
Varieties: 85% Mencía, 12% Alicante Bouschet, 3% other varieties
It's early September and I've travelled into Barcelona to meet a friend. I find him sitting outside a bar in the warm evening sun, sipping a cold beer. I order two more, we quench our thirst, and then head for one of my favourite wine haunts in town, Bodega Solera.
The food in this place is simple and good: fine cheeses, jamón and charcuterie (all sliced by hand to order), tinned delights from the sea, and always a handful of more substantial dishes built around whatever's in season. And then there's the wine.
We decided to go Spanish. A red, said my friend. Something vibrant, I replied. The somm brought us three of her favourites. And the one we chose was not just the most memorable wine I've drunk all year, it's one of the finest things I've ever had the pleasure to savour.
Both my friend and I were familiar with the wines of Envínate, although neither of us had ever tried this particular creation. I could tell you now that the Lousas Camiño Novo 2023 comes from a plot of 80-year-old vines in the Ribeira Sacra and is mostly Mencía, complemented by a small proportion of Garnacha Tintorera and a smidgen of other co-planted varieties. I'm minded also to share the recollection of how, on that September evening, I kept hovering over the glass, seduced by a multitude of delicate aromas (red fruits, wild flower, stony herbs…), before taking draw after slow draw through layers of liquid precision.
All that would be true, but it's not the whole story. For what made this wine so special was how it quickly became a conduit for communion between two friends. Wine as a reminder of our need for others, and of how a pleasure shared is pleasure indeed.
Only 1,560 bottles were produced, and they've flown, so if you have the good fortune to see it on the list of a wine bar or restaurant, don't think twice. Salut!
Alan Nance
