2018 Cambados Urban Winery Desconcierto Albarino Rias Baixas 750 ml

Cambados Urban Winery only made 120 cases of the Desconcierto 2018 Albariño—a crying shame, since just a fraction of our members will get a chance to sample this straw-hued, extraordinary Spanish white. It’s such a pure and fresh expression of Galicia’s sea-splashed coast that everyone deserves a shot at stowing away a half-case in their cellar. But today, to the swift go the spoils. 

This wine got everyone’s attention when Decanter bestowed a scorching 96 point score on this bottle, and gave it a World Wine Gold Award to boot, praising it as “very well-constructed” with “great concentration and incredible length.” 

We have 600 bottles total, and given the award-winning Desconcierto’s broad appeal—the clean minerality of Sancerre with the honeysuckle-kissed ripeness of Riesling—we expect our allocation to sell out within the day. 

That was pretty much our own experience with it, anyway. Prior to the Decanter prize, we might not even have heard of it were it not for a dinner at a Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant in the Bay Area. We ordered a glass of Cambados’s 2018 Albariño to pair with our wood-grilled octopus and mushrooms sautéed in sherry and garlic. It was tucked in the back of the wine list, and a crazy deal, so we didn’t expect it to floor us like it did with incredible purity and concentration, contrasting heady aromatics of peach, jasmine, and lemongrass with a dry mineral cut on the palate, and just enough viscosity to linger marvelously on the finish with a hint of salinity.

Our glass was empty in no time and we asked for another. Our waiter shrugged: We’d just finished the last they had, and the bottle was 86’d. The next day we were on the phone to Spain, determined to learn more about the distractingly good Albariño that had taken us by surprise. Luckily our detective work yielded results before the rest of the 2018 was spoken for. 

Cambados Urban Winery is a relatively new player on the scene but has already ignited demand across Europe and in the U.S., where it is only available on the West Coast and primarily via fine-dining wine lists. The vineyard sits in close proximity to the ocean (specifically the Ría de Arousa) and shows its maritime influence with every sip; vines are at least 25 years in age, with roots spidering in sand and fine granite particles. 

If you’re a fan of aromatic whites, this bottle has your number and is a wild steal at under $30.