Saving a grape from extinction

Terras Gauda first began incorporating Caíño Blanco into its wines alongside Albariño and Loureiro decades ago. At the time, the decision had little to do with climate change and everything to do with preserving a unique piece of Galicia's viticultural heritage.

"Caíño Blanco is a great variety that almost disappeared 45 years ago, and we recovered this great variety," Rodríguez said during a recent vineyard visit.

The grape's decline wasn't hard to understand.

Caíño Blanco produces small clusters, modest yields, and requires a significantly longer growing season than many competing varieties. For growers focused on productivity, other grapes offered an easier path.

"Everybody knows the quality, but everybody was changing [production to be] easier, more productive, less complicated," Rodríguez said.

That scarcity is one reason Terras Gauda continues planting more of the variety today.

"Albariño, you can find Albariño in the appellation," Rodríguez said. "There are many viticultures that plant Albariño, but not Caíño."

As the winery gradually increased the percentage of Caíño Blanco in its flagship wines, it encountered a practical problem. There simply wasn't enough of the grape available elsewhere in the appellation.

The solution was straightforward. Plant more Caíño Blanco.

Farming for concentration, not volume

The winery's vineyards stretch across rolling hillsides between roughly 160 and 500 feet in elevation. Unlike the traditional pergola system used throughout much of Rías Baixas, Terras Gauda trains its vines using a double cordon Royat system, which naturally reduces yields and increases concentration.

Rodríguez says the winery embraced the approach long before it became fashionable.

"We were the first winery planting with this system in Rías Baixas," he said. "The first one is less productive than the pergola, but more concentrated, more flavored, more structured wines."

The lower-yield approach is reflected throughout the estate.

"We are producing around 7000 kilos per hectare, and the DO allowed to produce 12,000 kilos," Rodríguez said.

That philosophy aligns perfectly with Caíño Blanco, a variety that naturally favors quality over quantity.

The climate change grape

While Terras Gauda's original investment in Caíño Blanco wasn't motivated by concerns about global warming, the grape's characteristics are proving increasingly valuable as temperatures rise.

"The grape variety that really resists the effects of the climate change is the Caíño Blanco better than Albariño," Rodríguez said.

The reason lies in its exceptionally long growing cycle.

According to Rodríguez, Caíño Blanco has the longest growing cycle of any white grape variety in Galicia. While Albariño typically ripens earlier, Caíño Blanco often reaches maturity toward the end of September when temperatures are cooler and daylight hours shorter.

That longer hang time allows the grape to retain acidity even in warmer growing seasons.

"One of the main characteristics of our wines are the high acidity," Rodríguez said. "Due to the warm temperatures we are losing this typical acidity, but not with the Caíño Blanco, due to the long cycle, so it's very resistant to the effects of the climate change."

For a region whose identity is closely tied to freshness and acidity, that resilience is becoming increasingly important.

Rodríguez is quick to acknowledge that the winery wasn't trying to solve climate change when it first embraced the grape.

"We didn’t. We weren’t thinking about the climate change, because was 35 years ago," he said. "But Caíño Blanco is the best one to resist the effects of the climate change."

Today, however, climate resilience has become one of the reasons the winery continues to expand its plantings.

The vineyard everyone thought was crazy

Perhaps the purest expression of Terras Gauda's faith in Caíño Blanco is La Mar, a single-vineyard wine sourced from a dramatic hillside site planted almost entirely to the variety.

Rodríguez remembers the reaction when he first proposed the project.

"When I saw the possibilities of this great variety, I decided to do something that was 100% Caíño," he said. "Everybody asked me if I was crazy."

The skepticism wasn't entirely unfounded.

The vineyard sits on slopes averaging roughly 25%, with only about 25 centimeters of topsoil before roots encounter solid schist. The schist-rich soils are a defining feature of O Rosal and stand in contrast to the predominantly granite-based soils found elsewhere in Rías Baixas.

"We have only 25 centimeters of sand, and after this 25 centimeters appear the schist," Rodríguez said.

Planting required drilling directly into the rock.

The site is challenging to farm and even more challenging to harvest.

While regulations permit yields of up to 12,000 kilograms per hectare, Terras Gauda produces roughly 7,000 kilograms per hectare in Albariño vineyards, around 6,000 kilograms in typical Caíño Blanco vineyards, and only about 4,000 kilograms per hectare from the La Mar site.

The steep slopes make mechanization impossible.

"We have to pick just by hand," Rodríguez said. That means the winery needs twice the manpower than it does for other plots.

The economics aren't always easy.

"The financial staff of our winery is not happy, because the cost to produce one kilo here is very expensive," Rodríguez said with a laugh.

From obscure grape to regional influence

What was once viewed as a difficult and largely forgotten variety is beginning to gain traction throughout Rías Baixas.

As more producers taste Terras Gauda's wines and observe how Caíño Blanco performs in a warming climate, interest has grown.

Terras Gauda has even helped encourage adoption by providing plant material to growers interested in grafting the variety into their vineyards.

Still, the winery remains the driving force behind the grape's revival.

For a variety that nearly disappeared from Galicia altogether, that's a remarkable turnaround.

And as wine regions around the world search for varieties capable of maintaining freshness and balance in warmer conditions, Caíño Blanco's combination of naturally high acidity, late ripening, and climate resilience may prove more valuable than ever.

In a region synonymous with Albariño, Terras Gauda is making the case that the future of Rías Baixas may be shaped by a grape that almost vanished.