Cume do Avia - 'Colleita 9 Tinto' - Field Blend - Galicia, ES - 2021

The wines etched into our memories don’t always come with obscene prices, rarity or universally acknowledged pedigrees—at least for the most adventuresome in the wine community. They are often uniquely personal and somehow evoke the memories from as far back as our childhoods. This is such a wine; it reminds me of getting lost in the wet forests surrounding the house in Montana I spent my first eight years in, picking wild huckleberries, digging in the dirt and hiding out in our pine tree forts. Raw and enticingly naked, the Colleita Tinto is the charming starting block for Cume do Avia’s range of honest and hardly touched wines, made from a blend of indigenous red Galician varietals. Caino Longo (40%) and Brancellao (26%) bring elegance and taut red fruits, and the balance from Sousón (34%), the dark, agile beast with a deep, vigorous acidity. It’s angular but still soft and restrained, and drinks as much like a white as it does red, save its glorious, dainty and fluttery red wine cha