Bodegas Albamar
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Atlantic-Driven Albariños: Albamar’s wines express the wild energy of Galicia’s coastal vineyards: saline, tense, and mineral.
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A Family Legacy Reimagined: Xurxo Alba transformed his father’s grape-growing into one of Rías Baixas’ most dynamic, terroir-focused wineries.
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Natural, Thoughtful Winemaking: Native yeast, long lees aging, minimal intervention. Xurxo lets the ocean and granite speak through the wine.
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More than Albariño: From fresh flagship bottlings to layered cuvées like Pepe Luis and Alma del Mar, Albamar captures the purity of Galicia.
Albamar – Atlantic Soul from Galicia
On the wild, windswept coast of Galicia, where the Atlantic crashes against rocky shores and vines grow close to the ocean, Xurxo Alba is making some of the most vivid and expressive wines in Spain. His family winery, Albamar, is based in Cambados, in the heart of the Salnés Valley, widely considered the finest subzone of Rías Baixas for Albariño. But what sets Albamar apart is not just its location, it’s Xurxo himself: a winemaker with intuition, nerve, and a deep respect for tradition filtered through a modern, minimalist lens.
Albamar began as a family project, as Xurxo’s father was a grower who sold grapes locally, but in the early 2000s, Xurxo returned home to take the reins and begin bottling estate wines under the Albamar name. From the beginning, he had a clear idea: Albariño could be more than fresh, fruity white wine. It could have texture, minerality, salinity, and soul.
Today, Albamar farms about 2.5 hectares of estate vines and works with trusted growers in the surrounding area. The vineyards are planted on classic granite and sandy soils, just a short distance from the sea, with fog, wind, and salt air shaping the grapes in every vintage. Farming is organic and low-intervention, and in the cellar, Xurxo uses native yeasts, spontaneous fermentation, and long lees contact. He often experiments with neutral barrels, foudres, and even skin contact, always in pursuit of more complexity, never to mask the grape.
His flagship Albamar Albariño is racy and saline, pure coastal energy in a bottle. But Xurxo’s range also includes deeper, age-worthy expressions like Pepe Luis, Alma del Mar, and single-vineyard bottlings that highlight just how transparent and terroir-sensitive Albariño can be. In addition to whites, Xurxo also works with Mencía, Espadeiro, and Caíño, crafting a handful of light, herbal, and wildly drinkable Galician reds from nearby DOs like Ribeira Sacra and beyond.
Xurxo Alba is more than a winemaker, he’s part of a movement. Alongside fellow Galician vignerons, he’s redefining what Atlantic wine can be: raw, electric, alive, and unmistakably tied to the place it comes from. With Albamar, you don’t just taste Albariño, you taste Galicia.