Godello: panel tasting results

Sarah Jane Evans MW, Christine Parkinson and David Williams tasted 51 wines, with 3 Outstanding and 30 Highly Recommended.

Godello panel tasting scores

62 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 3

Highly recommended 30

Recommended 15

Commended 3

Fair 0

Poor 0

Faulty 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release dry whites made from 100% Godello.

Choose Godello and you can’t go wrong. That was our verdict from a most enjoyable tasting.

From the top-left corner of Spain – Galicia and Bierzo – comes a white grape variety that retains a distinction wherever it grows. It’s as comfortable with oak as without. It covers the gamut of citrus flavours, but additionally can show layers of honey and apricots, as well as potentially offering a mineral or saline finish.

If Godello hasn’t been on your top five white wine list, include it now.

Scroll down for tasting notes & scores for the top-scoring Godello wines

Albariño, so well established in Rías Baixas, has come to be understood as the Galician white. This, Decanter’s first standalone tasting of Godello, proved there is strong competition in the fine wine stakes. While there were fewer entries than we would have seen in an equivalent Albariño tasting, quality and identity were consistently good to outstanding.

The wines in the tasting came from all five of the Galicia DOs, plus Bierzo. In recent times, many of Galicia’s wines were blends, also including the grapes Loureiro and Treixadura. What’s exciting now is to see Godello standing out as a distinct style.

The vast majority of the wines we tasted came not surprisingly from Godello’s homeland, Valdeorras – dubbed the ‘valley of gold’ by the Romans who mined the precious metal here.

The tasting prompted Christine Parkinson to a flood of descriptors. ‘All versions of lemon, bergamot, plus honeysuckle, honeydew melon and heather honey; and with greengage and yellow plums particularly characteristic of the Valdeorras wines,’ she noted.

David Williams observed that: ‘Godello isn’t massively aromatic in the Galician context; and it risks being monolithic.’ He found a distinct varietal character uniting the Valdeorras wines, with pithy notes of preserved lemons. Among the Bierzo examples he identified a linear, incisive style, and I noted their distinctive stony character.

On the right sites – such as Valdeorras, the furthest inland and most continental of Galicia’s DOs – Godello blossoms. It was impossible to generalise about Godello from Rías Baixas since there was only one example. It was also hard to draw sensible conclusions about Ribeira Sacra, with wines from two producers. Monterrei’s wines showed themselves to be sunny, straightforward styles as befitted their southerly origin.

There was no wine older than the 2018 vintage in this tasting – and undoubtedly Godello makes a terrific fresh white. However there are wines here that will definitely stand ageing and continue to develop, given their underlying fresh acidity, and careful oak management. In terms of winemaking, there were examples of fermentation in steel, oak and concrete. We noted that lees stirring was not always successful, sometimes giving the wine an excessive richness.

In the pantheon of Spain’s white wines, Godello shows itself to be up there with the best; exemplified by one of Spain’s all-time great whites from Rafael Palacios in Valdeorras (Sorte O Soro, see right). Godello is blessed with some excellent winemakers, working on occasion with old vines, and distinctive slate and granite soils.

Albariño has had its problems maintaining quality given the explosion of demand for its wines. Let’s hope that Godello and its growers can survive any similar challenges.

The top-scoring Godello wines:

The judges

Sarah Jane Evans MW is an awarded journalist, author and broadcaster, and a DWWA Co-Chair. Author of The Wines of Northern Spain (Infinite Ideas, 2018), she is also chair of Spain’s Gran Orden de Caballeros del Vino.

Christine Parkinson is co-founder of Brimful Drinks, developing products in the no- & low-alcohol sector. She was formerly at Michelin-starred Hakkasan Group for over 18 years as a buyer, latterly as its group head of wine. Numerous career awards include The Caterer’s Wine & Spirits Ambassador Catey in 2018.

David Williams is a regular contributor to Decanter on all things Spanish. He is wine correspondent for The Observer, deputy editor of The World of Fine Wine, and a columnist for trade magazine The Wine Merchant.

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