Last night (June 10th) we were thrilled to welcome Alfonso and Roberto of Envinate to Australia for the first time. We gathered a group of twenty customers and held a great dinner at Baron’s in Sydney’s CBD to showcase the new 2024s from both Galicia and Tenerife, with stock landing in Australia next week. We offer these wines below.
Dinner was as educational as it was fun. And while the 2024s were the showcase, some strategic older wines were dropped into the lineup by means of comparison across other vintages.
Whilst there wasn’t a bad wine in the lineup, I had some personal favourites. In the whites, I’d say that the Paolo Blanco bracket was most exciting. ‘Los Molinas’ 2022 is an exceptional wine, with high-tone aromatics, great detail of flavour and super-fine texture. The village Paolo Blanco is not far behind its single vineyard sibling in terms of quality, making it the value-buy of the lineup. The 2024 is precise, waxy and saline – a real pleasure to drink.
In the reds, from the Canaries, the Migan bracket of 2023 vs 2021 was quite fascinating. The 2023 was primary and showed a nice core of fruit with spice and smoke to contribute complexity, while the 2021 has entered its prime drinking window showing elegance and lifted red petal and floral aromatics. A very elegant wine and a sign of where the new 2024 will go with a few years in bottle.
Mention must also go to the Lousas wines of Galicia. These are my kind of reds! Elegance with depth of flavour and silky textures. The Doade 2024 was my red of the night, while the Lousas Vino de Aldea is exceptional value and a great drink right out of the gates.
Here we also offer wine beyond what was tasted over dinner. The top single site Mencias from Ribeira Sacra, for example, are offered here in limited quantities. In Galicia, Alfonso and Roberto regard 2024 as their best vintage to date so we await the wines quite eagerly. There are no reviews on these just yet, but the inside word is that they were reviewed very favourably quite recently with the notes going ‘live’ on Wine Advocate very soon…
Please read on for our full offer on the wines.
Ches Cook, Five Way Cellars.
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $60 Dozen Bottle Price: $54
The 2024 Benje Blanco comes from the same plots that produce the red Benje, because they are all field blends, and the whites are picked three weeks earlier than the reds. They don't do flor anymore (since 2023) because of the heat, and it's too risky without sulfur. It has a pale golden color and a mealy nose with some notes of cereals, dry flowers and pollen. It has a serious and stony palate, coming through as a very serious white well above what the price level might suggest. The parameters show the contained but good ripeness, under 12% alcohol, with good balance and freshness, pH 3.02 and 6.9 grams of acidity. There was a step up in 2023, and there's another one in 2024. 18,500 bottles and 150 magnums produced. It was bottled in July 2025. Drink 2025 – 2031, 95 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Envinate ‘Taganan’ Blanco 2024
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
The 2024 Táganan Blanco has a very serious and stony nose and a dry, chalky and mineral palate. This is always saline—the vineyard is very close to the sea, and the wine gets the influence from there. It can remind you of the sapid character of some wines from Jerez. It has the nuances of the field blend, in a subtle and elegant way. This matured in 350- and 600-liter barrels. It's clean and precise, with 12% alcohol, a pH of 3.06 and 7.05 grams of acidity. 5,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in July 2025. Drink 2025 – 2032, 96 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
The 2024 Palo Blanco was a little difficult to taste, as the nose seemed to have been suffering a little from the recent bottling. It fermented in concrete without temperature control, and then most of the wine matured in foudre and the rest in 350-liter used barrels. The year was quite homogeneous in the zone for the whites, they got very good yields and balanced wines. The palate is stunning—chalky but with elegance. The roots from the centenary cordon trenzado vines seem to have extracted all the minerality from the soils, and the wine is eminently stony. This is not a small cuvée: they produced some 13,000 bottles of this. It was bottled in July 2025. Drink 2025 – 2033, 98 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Envinate ‘Palo Blanco Las Molinas’ 2022
Single Bottle Price: $170 Dozen Bottle Price: $153
The 2022 Palo Blanco Las Molinas is a new white from Los Realejos, a large plot of some 1.2 hectares of vines. In 2021, the grapes from this plot went into the Palo Blanco blend that they bottled in 2022. For the 2022 vintage, they bottled a 1,500-liter oak foudre separately to make this wine, and another 3,500 liters still went to the Palo Blanco blend. This has moderate alcohol, 11.5%, and very low pH and high acidity, unusual parameters for the variety, something that seems to come from the zone. It's fresh, floral and expressive with just a spicy twist. It has a vibrant palate and a long, tasty, almost salty finish. There is a plus of complexity and finesse here. 1,988 bottles and 24 magnums were filled in July 2023. Drink 2024 – 2029, 98+ pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Envinate ‘Palo Blanco Las Molinas’ 2024
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $195 Dozen Bottle Price: $185.50
The 2024 Palo Blanco Las Molinas comes from a year with a homogeneous and normal production and also homogeneous ripeness. The wine is healthy and clean, and it achieved very good ripeness and kept very good freshness. It matured in a 20-year-old Italian foudre where it went through full malolactic. It's still a baby, with a bright and pale color and a slightly reductive nose, which I guess is a bit dizzy from the recent bottling. It has notes of struck match and a core of dry herbs, spices and flowers. It comes in at 12% alcohol, with a pH of 3.2 and 7.32 grams of acidity. It is vibrant and pungent, with great depth and complexity. It is long, dry and tasty, with a strong mineral sensation in the finish that is crunchy and salty. This should age magnificently in bottle. 2,000 bottles produced, a little less than in 2023, but they used more of this for the regular Palo Blanco blend. This It was bottled in July 2025. Drink 2025 – 2034, 99 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Envinate ‘Albahara’ Tinto 2024
Castilla-La Mancha
Single Bottle Price: $45
Dozen Bottle Price: $40.50
Magnum Single Bottle Price: $95
Magnum Dozen Bottle Price: $85.50
The red 2024 Albahra is the only wine I tasted this time, as the white was not produced. This is a blend of Garnacha Tintorera, Moravia Agria and Garnacha Tinta with a contained 13.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.42 and 5.8 grams of acidity. The varieties fermented separately with variable amounts of full clusters, and the wine matured in concrete, barrels and foudres. It has a harmonious and subtle nose with notes of flowers, herbs and berries with a spicy and earthy twist. The year was saved by some summer rains that allowed the grapes to complete the cycle. The harvest started 10 days earlier than normal, and they got lower yields. This is serious and balanced, following the nicely crafted style from the Envínate team, showcasing its birthplace. It's eminently Mediterranean with freshness and balance. This is a bargain for the quality it delivers. 66,000 bottles and 400 magnums produced. It was bottled in June 2025. Drink 2026 – 2030, 94 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $60 Dozen Bottle Price: $54
The southern red 2024 Benje is mostly Listán Prieto (a.k.a. País) from the Santiago del Teide zone of Tenerife, with some 9% Listán Blanco and maybe 1% Tintilla. It has a textbook nose of wet basalt, dry rose petals, black pepper and gunpowder. It has a medium-bodied and fine palate, with more freshness and hyper fine tannins. This has to be one of the best values from the whole of Spain, and this is one of the finest vintages. It comes in at 12.5% alcohol, with a pH of 3.36 and 6.2 grams of acidity. They have reduced the whole clusters and aged exclusively in neutral 225-liter barrels. 14,500 bottles and 150 magnums produced. It was bottled in July 2025. Drink 2025 – 2031, 95 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
The 2024 Táganan Tinto comes from a more challenging vintage in the zone of Taganana, very warm and dry, because 2023 was exceptionally good there. They did a shorter maceration, and the élevage was with the fine lees in 228-liter French oak barrels for nine months. They have been working the vineyards on their own, and this shows a step up in precision. They have also worked on minimizing the reductive character of the wines. This is clean and floral, and the palate is medium-bodied with some grainy tannins, a lighter year than 2023. 5,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in July 2025. Drink 2025 – 2032, 95 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Envinate ‘Taganan – Parcela Margalagua’ Tinto 2024
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $195 Dozen Bottle Price: $175.50
The 2024 Táganan Parcela Margalagua starts quite closed and is subtler. They have fine-tuned the work in the vineyard and with the lees, and the wines have gained in precision and complexity. 2024 is a lighter vintage than 2023, and the wine has an ethereal character that I like very much. This comes from red basalt soils with more iron but with a sandy texture that gives finesse, and it comes from ancient vines, a field blend with mostly Negramoll and Listán Negro and 10% Listán Blanco. In 2024, they fermented it with 100% full clusters and no temperature control in concrete with around 25 to 28 days of maceration, and the wine matured in neutral 228-liter barrels for nine months without racking or sulfur, during which time it went through malolactic fermentation. It opens up to elegant floral aromas and the textbook descriptors (dry rose petals, black peppercorns and wet pumice stone) in a subtle and balanced way. 1,800 bottles were filled in July 2025. Drink 2026 – 2036, 98+ pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
Forty percent of the 2023 Migan comes from concrete (the part bottled as Chingao) and the rest from wines aged in 228-liter barrels. The blend seems more polished and elegant than the Chingao, which felt rawer. It's still powerful and concentrated but has very good balance and elegance—one of the finest Migan to date. I also tasted it next to the bottled 2022, and this has a deeper color. It should age well in bottle. There will be some 7,000 bottles that they plan to bottle in November 2024. Drink 2025 - 2032 94-96 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
The more reductive and austere 2021 Migan has the classical Orotava profile, the spicy pepperiness, some smoky undertones and a medium-bodied palate with very fine, slightly dusty tannins. This wine is bottled a bit later; 12,500 bottles and 150 magnums were filled in December 2022. Drink 2024 – 2030, 95 pts, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
THE REDS FROM RIBEIRA SACRA, GALICIA
Envinate 'Lousas Vinas de Aldea' Mencia 2024
Ribeira Sacra, Galicia
Single Bottle Price: $62 Dozen Bottle Price: $55.80
2024 is an exceptional year for Envinate in Galcia. I find this to be exceptional value, with the same personality as the other wines sitting above it in the Envinate Galician stable. It’s silky and red fruited with subtle moss and damp earth below the surface. Tannin is low but present, bringing shape to the wine. There’s an inner brightness to this – it shows a real spark of life. – Ches Cook, Five Way Cellars.
This is s Aldea means “village” in Gallego; thus, this is Envínate’s “village wine”, produced from a combination of –minimum- 60-year-old plots located in Ribeira Sacra. This cuvee is made up of 90-95% Mencía with other co-planted varietals blended in. Vineyards: 400-600m.a.s.l on steep slopes made of slate and schist. Fermenation: 40% whole bunches. Elevage: 11 months in neutral oak (228L, 400L & 500L).
Envinate Lousas ‘Rosende’ 2024
Ribeira Sacra, Galicia
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
Notes not available as yet.
Ribeira Sacra, Galicia
Single Bottle Price: $85 Dozen Bottle Price: $76.50
My style of Mencia. Layered, deep and elegant with the prettiness of very good Pinot Noir. There is good depth here with a red floral element to the aromatics which is immediately enticing. Bright acid elevates both aromas and flavours. There’s a twinkle in the eye of this wine – it’s a great release. – Ches Cook, Five Way Cellars.
Mostly Mencía with other varieties (Garnacha Tintorera, Brancellao, Merenzao, Grao Negro, etc) from several vineyards in the town of Doade that range in age from 23-65 years. The lower vineyards are mainly schist, giving way to gneiss and quartz in the upper parts. Fermentation: Open top stainless steel. Elevage: 12 months in neutral oak (228L, 350L & 500L).
Envinate Lousas ‘Parcela Camiño Novo’ 2024
Ribeira Sacra, Galicia
Single Bottle Price: $195 Dozen Bottle Price: $175.50
Notes not available as yet.
Envinate Lousas ‘Parcela Seoane’ 2024
Ribeira Sacra, Galicia
Single Bottle Price: $195 Dozen Bottle Price: $175.50
Notes not available as yet.