This wine has an attractive aroma of blackberries, fresh thyme, subtle rose petals, and cardamom. The taste is juicy berry and dark cherry flavors with spices and floral aromas, slate minerality, refreshing acidity, and balanced tannins. Fermented with indigenous yeasts only. Aged 10 months in 225L barrels. Bottled unfiltered and unclarified. Alvaredos Hobbs is a boutique brand founded by Paul Hobbs, a leading California winemaker, and Antonio Lopez, a native of Alvaredos, Spain. Alvaredos is a small village along the Sil River in Galicia. Antonio grew up watching his uncle Fructoso cultivate and manage the grapes he planted himself in the fields around Alvaredos village, and sell the wine he made to a nearby large winery and a local restaurant in Quiroga (later it was discovered that the wine Fructoso was making was what we now call orange wine). Later, due to family circumstances, Antonio's family moved to the United States, and many of the fields in Alvaredos village that had been passed down through generations of the Lopez family since the 1800s were sold. In the early 1990s, as an adult, Antonio decided to reopen a winery in Alvaredos village, where he was born and raised, and bought back many of the fields that had been sold. He was heavily involved in the reconstruction efforts of Alvaredos village, which was on the verge of abandonment, and also established a winery that would become the base for making his own wine. Antonio's goal is to produce top quality wines that Galicia can be proud of in Alvaredos village and to spread the wonderfulness of this small rural town deep in the mountains where he was born and raised and where he has many family memories to the world. In 2015, Antonio teamed up with Paul Hobbs and Alvaredos Hobbs was born. It goes without saying that the reason for using the name of the village instead of Antonio's own name in the winery's name is that the history of wine in Galicia is long, and there are records that the ancient Romans planted grapes on the south-facing slopes along the Sil River more than 2,000 years ago. After that, under the influence of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela (World Heritage Site) created to spread Christianity, wine brewing and culture were further spread by monks. The Alvaredos Hobbs winery is located along this pilgrimage route. Alvaredos village is located in the Ribeira Sacra DO (Inland Spain). This area is known for its strong influence from the Atlantic Ocean, and is a region of steep terraced fields (up to 55 degrees) that spread across the mountainside. Along with the neighboring Valdeorras DO, the indigenous black Mencia grape and white Godello grape varieties grow in soils that contain slate, quartz, granite, and clay, under the watchful eye of the blazing sun. The mountains surrounding the vineyards protect the grapes from the rain, and the area is known for its long growing season with extreme temperature differences. A portion of the sales (locally) of Alvaredos Hobs is donated to efforts to protect and revive villages that are on the verge of abandonment, such as Alvaredos, which exist in many Galician villages.