Terra de Asorei: the gourmet Albariño whatever your budget may be

We visit the Terra de Asorei winery, an innovative initiative that joined together six traditional wineries in Salnés so as to be more competitive, producing a quality Albariño wine that is primarily destined for export.

Terra de Asorei: the gourmet Albariño whatever your budget may be

Xosé Ramón Durán

To join together to produce a quality, authentic wine, with 100% Albariño grapes and at affordable prices. Using this philosophy six family wineries in O Salnés, the cradle of the Denomination of Origin Rías Baixas, joined together in 2015 with their 60 hectares of vineyards to form the company Bodegas Terra de Asorei SL, with the aim of being more competitive and selling Albariños outside Galicia that are proud of being Galician.

The values of this innovative winery are summarised in the logo of their unique wine more, which contains the text of a symbolic poem of six A’s: A of Albariño, Adegas, Asorei, Art, Authenticity and with ‘Amor’ (love).

“We want our three wines that we produce jointly
-Terra de Asorei, Nai e Señora and Pazo Torrado- –
to be a gourmet product, which convey the essence
of Galicia around the world, but at affordable prices that allow them enjoyed by all customers,” explains Xosé Ramón Durán, “Roque”, president and chief executive officer of the Board of Directors, a work that he coordinates with his profession as a journalist.

Targets that were more than met, with around 400,000 bottles that came out of the winery in 2016, located in Meis a town council in Pontevedra, in the heart of the Salnés.

Three types of wine for every occasion

The three wines Terras de Asorei has on the market are made using “networking”, with grapes from the vineyards of the six wineries. “Our market strategy is to offer Albariños with a clear commitment: to transmit the values of the company, the sensations of our land, and all this with the maximum quality and at reasonable prices,” adds Roque Durán.

In this way, “Terra de Asorei” is an Albariño aimed at the Horeca market, fermented at 16ºC for 21 days in stainless steel tanks and with three months of aging on lees. The name of this wine and the winery is a tribute to Francisco Asorei, the famous Galician sculptor born in Cambados and considered as one of the most important Galician artists of the 20th century.

“70% of our consumers are abroad and we want to convey the sensations of Galicia to them with our wines”

“Pazo Torrado” is more geared to food chains, a young wine that pays tribute to one of the most emblematic architectural monuments of the town of Cambados, the Pazo do Torrado, destined to one day be the headquarters of the Regulatory Board of the Denomination of Origin Rías Baixas.

And “Nai e señora” is designed to search for new markets for this 100% Albariño that follows traditional productions methods in the valley of Salnés. Through its name it pays homage to the Galician women, who forged the identity of the Galician people.

The export already exceeds 35% of its Market

Right now, the Albariños of this winery are present in 11 international markets that represent around 35% of total sales, while the Galician market has sales of 30% and the remaining 35% is sold in other parts of Spain.

The main external market of the Albariño from Bodegas Terra de Asorei is the United Kingdom, followed by the United States, Holland and Ireland. It has also increased its sales in Poland, Russia, Japan and Puerto Rico and are negotiations are taking place to introduce it into Sweden and Norway.

“Our goal for the next few years is to continue growing in a sustained and sustainable manner, adjusting the production of our vineyards and marketing, to obtain 50% of sales at international level,” says the president and chief executive officer of the Board of Directors.

Commitment to Galicia Qulaity (Galicia Calidade): a perfect pairing

“Right now 70% of our sales are already outside Galicia, and we want every person to experience the sensations associated with our land every time they open one of our wines and what we want to transmit as a company is: quality, nature, authenticity and people who keep their word”, Xosé Ramón Durán.

This wish that its wines be all over the world as Galicians led Bodegas Terras of Asorei to join the Galicia Quality (Galicia Calidade) seal in March 2016. “For us Galicia Quality is a perfect pairing with our wines because it conveys our values as a company that is continuously improving in quality and to show the rest of the world who we are,” he stresses.

Within the commitment of this winery for excellence, in addition to the controls of origin and quality of the Rías Baixas Regulatory Board, in February 2016 they also attained ISO 9001 Quality Management and ISO 14001 for Environmental Management.

Future projects: Wine tourism, new technologies, and to increase production

The future projects of Bodegas Terras de Asorei involve boosting wine tourism within the Wine Route of the Rias Baixas, for which they will present new tourist products in the coming months. “And we believe that the location of the winery, which is highly visible and has direct access from exit 7 of the Salnés motorway, allows it to have a reference position right at the door of the Salnés Valley,” adds Xosé Ramón Durán.

Within this strategy to boost wine tourism, this summer they have planned to redefine the façade or skin of the winery with a new design from the architects Seso Martínez and Teresa Outeda Táboas.

“We have already sold 50% in Japan”

Another pillar of Terras de Asorei to meet the challenges of the future is to become what is called a “4.0 Bodega”. This will be implemented in the improvement of production systems in the winery, in the media and software necessary for a better traceability, so that the origin of the wine can be followed from the vines to the production, bottling, labelling and exit for their commercialisation.

All this will be accompanied with a plan to increase the presence of Terras de Asorei wines in the digital marketplace, on-line sales and on social networks that will be created during 2018/2019.

With regard to developments in the market, in addition to growing internationally, they have also planned to increase their sales in the Spanish and Galician internal market, always with grapes belonging to the vineyards of the six partners, and taking advantage of their winery that has the capacity to produce up to 600,000 bottles, without the need to carry out any further works.

We shall also evolve towards new products, and this Christmas we will bring out our sparkling wines or Atlantic Bubbles of Terra de Asorei, for which we already have some 3,000 bottles committed to Japan, and during the next few years we want to expand our range with spirits,” explains Xosé Ramón Durán.

Os tres viños de Terra de Asorei no mercado

Terra de Asorei: an example of joining up wineries to be more competitive and reach new markets

Bodegas Terra de Asorei SL arose through the evolution of the E.I.G. formula (Economic Interest Grouping), Terra de Asorei, in 2008. It started working as a “networking winery” where the partners joined together to develop in common, each at their own facilities, a wine intended for export while at the same time each winery maintained their own brands.

Finally a group of six partners of Salnés with a long-standing tradition in the production of Albariño set up Bodegas Terra de Asorei SL. They are Adegas Vieites SL, Reixas Negras SL, Terra de Sisán SL, Xesvitgal SL, Elisabeth Castro and Ramón Trigo Daporta.

“We took the step to join together in the worst years of the crisis because we could see that as family wineries it was increasingly difficult to compete in a global market, and the joining up into a single winery allowed us to greatly improve efficiency, reduce costs and reach new markets”, recognises the CEO of the winery.

“With the joining up into a winery we reduce costs and we can reach new markets”

In October 2015 we took a big step to buy, without subsidies, the modern facilities of an already built winery and which had been closed for few years, along with 15,000 metres of piling.

So, today the four pillars of Bodegas Terras de Asorei are the development of the company’s own brands (Terra de Asorei, Pazo Torrado and Nai e Señora); the provision of services and production of the partners’ brands, which add up to more than 150,000 bottles in the market; an agreement to produce 100,000 bottles for groups of Galician distributors during 5 years, as well as services to other companies, such as bottling, labelling, etc..

“Ours is a commitment to a quality Albariño with business capacity to make Terra de Asorei one of the ten reference brands of the Rias Baixas and of Galicia,” concludes Xosé Ramón Durán.

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