Ramón do Casar, the fruit of the return

Ramón do Casar Nobre has been distinguished as the Best Wine of Spain 2022, Food of Spain Award from the Ministry of AgricultureRamón González emigrated to Venezuela in 1955, and when he came back he wanted “to have his garden, his wines, and all that, little by little, was drifting into something bigger”In this year of incessant heat and overwhelming drought, “our grapes are healthy, fortunately”The Miño is a mirror of water that widens when it reaches the Castrelo de Miño reservoir (Ourense), which It changed the life and landscape of this area. Very close to there, in the parish of Prado de Miño, on the left bank of the river, one of those precious Galician stories of return was woven, of attachments, of fulfilled dreams of emigration. José Luis Cuerda, who also nested in lands do Ribeiro, that “memories, desires and dreams are made of the same materials”. Ramón González was born in 1928 and in 1955 he emigrated to Venezuela in search of a new life, another life, but taking with him the traces and memory of his land: El Casar, a territory in the middle of the parishes of Astaríz and Prado belonging to the Ourense municipality of Castrelo de Miño. In his comings and goings he met Áurea, married her and together they undertook her life projects in that country that at that time was a land of promise and abundance. Their two eldest children, Ramón and Etelvino, were born there in the mid and late sixties although they grew up in Galicia until they were 18 years old because it was the couple’s wish that they take root in this land. I meet Javier, the youngest of the brothers , the third, who was already born in Galician lands. He is the one who starts with his story: “My father, from 1975 to 2013, when we opened the winery, was buying plots and vineyards with the firm objective of returning once his working life was over to a place where he could bring together his family and turn this place into the common link”. “Our father -he continues- wanted like all emigrants to return, to have his garden, his wines and all that, little by little, led to something bigger”. The verticality of the call of the earth, the transversal memory of the return. This brief talk with Javier is lulled to sleep by the vibrant murmur of the river in this leafy terrain of the Ribeiro, arcádic, mythical, paradisiacal, where the vines are the characteristic of a landscape that promises early harvests. That “green-eyed valley, sleeps that sleeps in the anxiety of everyday life”, as the verses of the local poet, Eladio Rodríguez, say. Only whites “Ramón liked whites, especially treixadura and his only experience with wine was domestic, family Actually – Javier points out to me – our intention to make a winery was also due to a desire to connect with the town. This project began in the year 2000, when we were already collecting grapes to sell them to one of the wineries here, and in 2011 we decided to build the winery, in the midst of the economic crisis, which we finished a couple of years later. In 2013 it was our first vintage, our first vintage, which was released the following year”. Ramón do Casar WineryRoberto Nuñez StudioI always say that I like reds a lot, but the greatest emotions of my life, the greatest surprises, the unexpected have arisen of the spark of the whites, although the important thing about the wines is that they take us to their origin, that they speak to us, that they show us their landscape, their terroir, their origin, until achieving the body to body with their recipient willing to this willing learning . “Destiny is attributed by the winds”, affirmed the poet Manuel Vilanova. Sometimes wines, like emigrants, are repositories of messages, of messages, of a different way of telling dynamics that not only crosses borders but also crosses the times. While we look and talk, Javier and I, glass in hand, this August day burns within itself, as if it wanted to bring the sunset to a bonfire. Continuing to talk about the awards and especially the latter: Best Spanish Wine 2022, Spanish Food Award from the Ministry of Agriculture for Ramón do Casar Nobre, I decided to join the conversation with Luis Paadin, “the man who knew too much ” of the wines of Galicia, author of the most complete and exhaustive guide I know of the wines of this land. This is his voice on this matter: “I would highlight three facets of Ramón do Casar: the first, the human factor. Let’s not forget that wines are made by people. I think that although this is an average winery in the area, it is made on a human scale. On that ground is the emotional part of emigration, of learning that work is effort and that there are no shortcuts to success, that you have to dedicate many hours and a lot of sacrifice. They started like this: located in a production area that was not so much for wineries (now it is), but for grape harvesting, in fact, as Javier has already said, that was what they did until the vines were curdling, taking on an identity own and that was when they made the decision to take the leap; they did so with a certain pause, with prudence, questioning the work teachings of emigration. The result has been a winery conceived and designed to make the wine they had in their heads”.Roberto Nuñez Studio Family ArchivesCelso Emilio Ferreiro used to say in some beautiful verses: “Prepare the cups of white lovers/ which are as smooth as a silk/ and they pour themselves over the afternoon with a happy music of magical harps, sweet and distant/ Ribeiro wine, source of consolation”. On this luminous August afternoon, the sun that spills over this Ourense hillside seems to shine only for us , caressed by that “golden light” as José Hierro called it, I continue the conversation with Luis to delve deeper into the wine, so that he can tell me about Pablo Estévez, the winemaker, an institution in the area: “Pablo is not good because, simply and simply, he is a magician of grapes or wine -he specifies-, but he does his job very well, wonderfully; and he only agrees to work for those who respect his criteria both in the winery and in the vineyard. And although we tasters say that Pablo Estévez’s wines resemble him, it is true, the long experience and knowledge of years of proximity tell me, that at first they may resemble but over time they reflect the territory from which they come , with which we return to put a landscape in a bottle”. “Another of the admirable facets -continues Luis- is that in the Ribeiro almost no wine is monovarietal, but the market (especially the American one) has imposed menus based on to grapes, we also have to think that the word “treixadura” is not easy to pronounce and perhaps for this reason this assemblage of intelligences between the González and Estévez has emerged to take advantage of this circumstance and also the fact that consumers increasingly demand novelties and elaborate a monovarietal that over time has been superimposed, in my opinion, on the multivarietal”. “They were also pioneers in making a godello with a barrel in the Ribeiro and they are showing that slow wines can be produced, calm, quiet wines, in which the grape expresses what it can express.”Bunch of grapesRoberto Nuñez StudioIn a beautiful story, the Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes spoke of a cook cooking half-baked words, and with a lot of patience and restraint he turned them into something better. They have done the same thing at Ramón do Casar, one of those projects that has contributed to enlarging the world of Ribeiro. Before returning to the conversation with Javier and saying goodbye to Luis, I want us to talk about another of the arterial facets of the winery: the marketing. “In this aspect, what they have done is worthy of applause: not entering into wars, into the internal affairs of the Ribeiro, living an integrated life where they were left and where they wanted, and always being very participatory. They have gone to the most prestigious contests and have triumphed in all of them and that speaks of a reality that makes Galicia great and therefore the Ribeiro region. They deserve what they have because they have worked for it and they have done it as I would have liked to do it”. John Berger said that “all eyes leave traces”, those of Ramón are here, in these vineyards and in this territory, in his application so that his children would take root in the land that he and Áurea always carried with them while they raffled in Venezuela the billiard caroms of life. “As I told you before, my father liked whites and in his memory we have only planted white grapes. He died in 2016, he was able to taste the vintages of 13 and 14 and he left us just before we released the 15. We were lucky that he was able to see the vineyards, the winery, and the project already underway and even that we celebrate some prize together”. We talk about prizes while the Ramón do Casar Nobre (the recently awarded wine) animates our conversation: “We usually go to the competitions -says Javier- and we have been lucky that our wines have often won prizes . The truth is that it is very good because without a doubt this is the best publicity, the best way of saying here we are. We are delighted and surprised but I always tell people: they are giving us an award for a job we have done last year or in previous years and we will quickly forget it because the present is pressing us. The awards tell us that the path we are on is correct because, as our father thought, ‘the goal is the path’. The present is before our eyes, in this year of incessant heat and overwhelming drought. This is also a topic of conversation: “Our grapes are healthy, fortunately. The harvest is a little late, we thought that the heat could have brought it forward but since there has been no rain it has not been like that and so it is a little irregular, let me explain: there are areas where the humidity is high and the grape is very well, very developed and there are others in which we have had to help her, support her with some irrigation. I think that this, if there are no very sudden storms or premature frosts (our worst enemies), will be a very good vintage, but I always talk about our vines, our vineyards. In any case, it is advisable to be very alert, very aware of everything.” As José Luis Alvite said, “the afternoon goes at the speed of oil” and the pins of the sun dot every millimeter of the territory as if they wanted to show the exact dimension of the loss , but also rootedness, that feeling that is reflected in the photographs that are reflected in each bottle as a label.Bottle of Ramón do Casar Nobreniusdiario.esRamón do Casar is a wine illustrated with different images from the camera of Coruña photojournalist Alberto Martí, who began taking photographs at the age of 12, back in the 1930s, photos that narrated the feat that an entire generation had to face. Images that collected that tremor of goodbye that left with the emigrants in pursuit of the trail of the foam of its waves. The payment of the rights of these photographs also had a good destination, the soup kitchen of A Coruña of which Alberto was president. The light is making the afternoon shipwreck and imposing the farewell, each one of us has to return to our daily walk. I look, while I’m leaving, at this land that has been filling nostalgia, repairing the feeling of separation. The Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro wrote in a curious poem that the four cardinal points were three: north and south. Those of O Casar have always been two: the outward journey and the return. This is a small homeland that was born basting dreams and is now the repository of a memory that unfolds them into the future, it is therefore and also a good place to dream. What rhymes with marry?