Zarate
Balado Albarino
Rias Baixas
2021

The producer

Located in the Val do Salnes subzone of Rias Baixas, Bodegas Zarate is arguably one of the area’s finest producers. Founded in the 1920s by Ernesto Zarate, the estate has been instrumental in promoting quality wine production in the region from the very beginning. The current winemaker, Eulogio Pomares, is Ernesto’s grandson and studied winemaking in Bordeaux and Germany before returning to Rias Baixas, in the early 2000s, to take over the family farm. Amongst other improvements, Eulogio introduced organic farming and sustainable practices. In 1954, Ernesto Zarate along with three friends founded the Cambados Albarino Festival, which today draws hundreds of people to the area each year.

The wine

Made from organically grown fruit, Zarate’s Albarino is a crisp and juicy white wine with enticing stone fruit aromatics and stony minerality. Vinified in stainless steel and with a short time of lees ageing, the texture is elegant and velvety.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.