Mixtura
Independent Wines
(mix-too-rah) | Ribeiro
Mixtura is a new, avant-garde project…
by Gutier Seijo Otero, a Galicia native who gained extensive experience in his former position as winemaker at Dominio do Bibei in Ribeira Sacra. Gutier has been the mastermind behind many of the great vintages and advancements in modern Galician wine. His Mixtura, created in 2019, is the natural evolution of his ideals and vision.
Mixtura was born of an ideology built on the search and recovery of historical vineyards and their native varieties along the path of the ancient river valleys of northwestern Spain’s border with Portugal. Mixtura pays homage to the landscape, architectural, and cultural heritages of each region: Gutier’s homeland. The goal is to make profoundly pure and authentic wines, and the result places Mixtura among the most exciting and honest wines being produced in Spain today.
Gutier is uninterested in the political restrictions of traditional viticultural disciplines…
rather, he is focused on the right mix of vineyards with the ideal soil and climate conditions best suited to the native grape varieties of the region. This philosophy means vineyards on the east and west side of the Miño river in both Spain and Portugal, ignoring political borders and focusing on natural barriers—the real defining factors of terruño. It is a daring, complex project, illuminating the path towards the delimitation of wine around nature, the borders of the project being established by the landscape.
At its heart, Mixtura is a river wine, guiding the drinker downstream along the Miño and Sil rivers from its source in Bierzo and through the native varieties at each point of the river. Mencía from Bierzo, godello from Valdeorras, mencía and brancellao from Ribeira Sacra, treixadura and caiño in Ribeiro, and albariño from the Rías Baixas. The cornerstone of this project is not to make varietal wines but, as Gutier says, “to make wines of greater entity.” Mixtura is a way of working freely, without ties of any kind, other than deep respect for the land and culture of northwestern Spain’s river valleys.
Winemaking is done in a renovated 1950s workshop in San Clodio…
the heart of the Ribeiro wine region. Built by master stonemasons out of local materials and later abandoned for forty years, Gutier rehabilitated the structure, preserving the original structure of the building, retaining the original feeling of a workshop. Fermentation takes place in large format concrete eggs and Stockinger barrels. Gutier approaches the process of fermentation and aging not as just an input, but rather as a process of stabilization so that the wine will last and improve in bottle. To these ends, no chemicals are used in the Mixtura vineyards, and all parcels are handpicked and fermented exclusively with native yeasts, the necessary steps for preserving each plot’s terruño. Sulfur is minimal, only added at bottling, if necessary.
Northwestern Spain has always been a beloved and magical region for everyone at De Maison Selections, and we have been fortunate to work with several legendary pioneers from the first wave of the region’s viticultor movement. With Mixtura, we are thrilled to work with the voice of the next generation, the vanguard of the radical evolution of this region’s indigenous wines onto the world stage.
