The Sil valley has drawn prospectors since Rome mined gold along its course; Godello, the old white of those gorges, nearly vanished with less ceremony. After phylloxera and the rural exodus, by the early 1970s only a few hundred vines were left standing in Valdeorras.
Its rescue was deliberate. From 1974 the replanting programme known as REVIVAL tracked down the survivors, selected the best and returned the grape to the slate terraces of the Sil and to its neighbours in Bierzo and Ribeira Sacra. The result is often called Spain's answer to white Burgundy: stone fruit and fennel over wet slate, a texture that takes lees ageing and oak with unusual grace, and enough acidity to reward a decade in bottle.