Mission Dos 2020 | Ribeira Sacra

Mission is the project of Zachary Elfman, a Californian from the San Francisco Bay Area who settled in Ribeira Sacra in 2015 after eight years in London and harvest internships at Keermont Vineyards (Stellenbosch, South Africa) and Zuccardi's Q division (Mendoza, Argentina). The search for a territory with old vines, pre-industrial agriculture and a wine culture still rooted in the landscape brought him to Galicia — where he lives with his partner, who is from Asturias — and specifically to the Chantada area in the Ribeiras do Miño subzone and the Quiroga valley.

Zak works with three trusted local growers with whom he has maintained supply relationships since his arrival. The parcels sit on slate and schist in Sobrecedo (between Chantada and Taboada) and on granite along the Miño riverbanks at higher elevations. They are old-vine field blends: Mencía, Garnacha Tintorera, Brancellao, Merenzao, Godello, Treixadura and Doña Branca coexist in the same plots, giving the wines a complexity impossible to replicate from a single variety. At least one of the vineyards holds organic certification.

Winemaking is artisan and intensely manual: hand-harvested in 18 kg crates, foot-stomped, gentle hand punch-downs, no chemical additives, no filtration and minimal sulphur. The wines age in neutral French oak barrels for as long as each one requires. The core range is Uno (Mencía and Garnacha Tintorera from the slopes of the Cañón del Sil), Dos (slate-soil vineyards in Sobrecedo, 100% organic) and Tres (a field-blend white of Godello, Treixadura and Doña Branca). Moonrise and Cunca de Ouro are expressions of distinct terroirs within the same minimal-intervention philosophy. Mission is part of the RAW WINE network and distributes in the United States through DesPaña (New York).