Vinos del Viento Garnacha Blanca

This is not your average white wine-this is mountain-grown, hand-harvested Garnacha Blanca with some serious altitude attitude. Crisp, textured, and quietly complex, it's a white that knows how to keep things fresh and elegant. Expect vibrant orchard fruit, floral lift, and a whisper of lees-aged creaminess. It's all stainless steel and chill, but with just enough richness to make things interesting.

Michael Cooper, proprietor, vigneron and winemaker for Vinos del Viento, is originally from Santa Barbara. He met his wife Rosario, who hails from Zaragoza, in Rome; and fell in love with the wines and landscapes of her home country, the Grenache territory of southern Aragon. Here, the Ebro River provides little "river influence" in the sense of the Rhone or Mosel- it's simply too small to act as a heat reservoir. But its valley acts as a wind funnel, with a constant flow of air coming down from the cool mountains keeping the vines and fruit dry and healthy (and hence, the name Vinos del Viento). One of the unique features of Michael's wines is that they're all from these ancient vineyards, all dry farmed, and all high-altitude. In fact his lowest vineyard is at 1800ft elevation! These are some of the purest expressions of great indigenous varieties in all of northeast Spain.