2009 Raul Riba D’Ave Sílica XP DOC Branco Estágio Prolongado

Raul Riba D’Ave and his friend Marcos Pinto da Silva toured the latter’s high-altitude vineyards in Távora-Varosa. The idea was to make a white wine with the potential to evolve in the bottle, like the great Riesling. Raul bet heavily on the Sercial grape variety (and less on Malvazia Fina) to create a totally unwooded wine that would express the best that the site and the grape varieties used could reveal. This was the first experiment and, after 10 years of singular ageing in transparent glass in a dark cellar, the wine was launched onto the market.