Grape expectations: You've got to have a taste for heights at this Spanish winery

In Spain's northwestern corner, local winegrowers aided by Moldovan labourers carefully handpick indigo-hued grapes on terraced hills facing vertiginous drops to make ancestral wines - a practice known as "heroic viticulture."

Tucked inland from Galicia's fishing coasts, the Ribeira Sacra region - meaning "sacred riverbank" - derives its name from its abundance of medieval churches and monasteries in Romanesque style.

But it is the terrain's uniqueness, with its steep V-shaped valleys, mineral-rich slate soil and cool climate, that imparts many qualities prized by wine lovers to the aromatic grape varieties grown there, such as Mencia, Godello or Loureira.

"It's a totally human viticulture that isn't mechanised and has a lot of identity," Fernando Gonzalez, owner of the Algueira winery in the village of Doade, said. He added he preferred the descriptor "dramatic" to "heroic" as "you either hate or love it, you either stay or leave."

Founded in 1998, Algueira spans 30 hectares and produces up to 150,000 bottles per year. Come harvest season, temporary grape pickers, many from eastern Europe, lend manpower to an operation that relies almost entirely on handwork.

An exception are rails traversing some of the abrupt slopes, allowing for an easier transportation of boxes filled to the brim with the Bacchic fruits.

Recovery from near-extinction

Around the turn of the 20th century, infestations of the sap-sucking pest Phylloxera virtually wiped out the region's ancestral varieties. The catastrophe led to widespread poverty, population decline and sparked waves of migration.

After the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the Spanish government began granting subsidies to local farmers with old plots that retained pest-free specimens in a bid to recover the heirloom vines.

That revitalization of a little-known region has boosted Ribeira Sacra's international prestige, said British-Spanish wine writer Harold Heckle, despite high costs limiting production, making it "the preserve of the informed wealthy".

According to Heckle, for connoisseurs who appreciate not just the beverage's flavours but also its historical context, the region's wines "reflect things that are of enormous value".

"Wine describes human history better than almost any crop man cultivates," he said. "While it tastes fabulous, it's that culture that attracts a hell of a lot of wine lovers".

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