Nous avons de la chance avec le millésime 2025 :
un grand millésime, avec en plus de beaux volumes.
C’est d’ailleurs la toute première fois que je peux consacrer une newsletter à ce vin ! Les autres années, il était toujours épuisé en un rien de temps.
Hier, lorsque j’ai proposé de parler de ce vin, j’ai tout de suite trouvé des enthousiastes au bureau : apparemment, cette cuvée compte beaucoup d’admiratrices 😉…
De quel vin s’agit-il ?
Encore une cuvée de notre ami
Rodri Méndez, du domaine
Forjas del Salnés, en Rías Baixas.
Le blanc en question est le
Leirana Genoveva 2025. Un
100 % Albariño issu d’un terroir granitique, d’une parcelle plantée de
vignes de plus de 100 ans. Fermentation et élevage en grands foudres de bois de 2 500 litres. Un peu plus de 5 000 bouteilles produites en 2025. Un
millésime bien mûr, avec beaucoup d’ampleur, tout en gardant une trame minérale. Une belle acidité, un équilibre parfait, beaucoup de complexité et une grande longueur.
Juste ce qu’il faut de matière, apportée par la fermentation en foudres de chêne et le terroir.
Ce 2025 n’a pas encore été noté. Le dernier millésime évalué, le 2023, avait d’emblée décroché un superbe 97/100, l’une des meilleures notes jamais attribuées à un blanc espagnol !
Leirana, Genoveva 2023 : 97/100
“The 2023 Leirana Finca Genoveva deserves the best treatment: a wide Burgundy glass and plenty of time and patience. This is a very serious white that transcends variety and vintage, from a very special place, a centenary vineyard that transmits the strict and serious character of the granite soils like few others. The wine fermented and matured in well-seasoned, neutral 2,500-liter oak foudres with the lees untouched for one year. This is always closed, ungiving and austere at first and when young, but it's also precise, symmetric and full of energy rather than weight. It has very balanced parameters: 12.55% alcohol, a pH of 3.29 and 7.14 grams of acidity. 5,000 bottles were filled in September 2024. At Forjas del Salnés, they have fermented their 2024s in their new winery in Meaño. They have 12 hectares of vineyards in Meaño, Ribadumia, Sanxenxo, Cambados and Barro and produce 130,000 bottles with the help of Raúl Pérez, with whom they also produce some wines. For them, 2023 was a year of contrasts, with rainfall exceeding 2,000 liters, something that hadn't happened for a decade. However, it was also a year of abundant sunshine, with more than 2,300 hours of sunshine recorded, the second highest ever. July was colder and wetter than normal, with an average temperature three degrees lower than in 2022. The wines are certainly fresher than those from 2022. 2024 was warm and humid, with above-average temperatures and abundant rainfall. The winter was very warm, with above-average temperatures, and the summer also saw high temperatures and a marine heat wave. Rainfall was above average, especially in autumn. But the result is superb. Rodrigo Méndez said, "It’s the finest vintage for me since 2010. It’s rare to find such balance between ripeness and acidity; usually when we have more ripeness, the acidity drops, and in years of less ripeness, the acidity goes up. In 2024, we found a perfect balance.” The wines are vibrant and fresh, with marked salinity in the finish. “For the reds, it’s a different story; the red grapes need warm years. 2022 was perfect after a dismissal 2021. 2023 was not bad, and 2024 is more variable, not homogeneous.”