The color of Pazo Baión wines

The color of Pazo Baión wines is strongly related to the albariño grape variety

Things have no color. It is our brain that creates it. When we observe the color of Pazo Baión wines, what is happening is that our brain is generating that perception by appreciating the differences in the composition of the wavelengths of light that reach our retinas.

This is why perception plays a key role in how we see the world. And, above all, what color we see it in.

Precisely, color marks, even if we do not realize it, in our daily lives. Not just matters of life and death, such as knowing whether the traffic light is red or green, but the perception we have of everything and everyone.

But chromatism is not a mere letter of introduction, but a crystalline reflection of what things are… and people. Thus, the color of wines reveals their essence.

What does the color of wines tell us?

Good wine is like a great novel: it tells a story. If books reach readers through words, wines make their way through the senses: taste and smell, but also sight.

The color of wines is not a mere aesthetic detail. Which, on the other hand, is not a trivial matter. Aesthetics matter a lot. Both in the wine world and the rest of society. If the color of the wine is beautiful, it will already attract our eyes before we even bring the glass to our nose and mouth.

Beyond the classic tripartite classification that everyone knows: whites, rosés, and reds, the truth is that each wine has its color. Not all whites are the same. Nor are all rosés. Not all reds. Sometimes the differences are visible to the naked eye and the layman’s eye. But when we talk about quality wines, such as Albariño, you have to know how to look at them to capture their chromatic peculiarities.

Many factors come into play to configure the color of the wines, among which we can highlight:

• The type of soil where the vines grow.
• The grape variety with which they are made.
• The climate where the vineyards are located.
• The winemaking process.
• The aging process.
• The age once they are bottled.

And it is precisely these factors that we can discover if we know how to look at the wine. In other words, an exciting story that emerges from the earth and ends up on the palate and in the nose. The individual history of some elaborations that are the result of the action of nature and the good work of winegrowers and winemakers.

The importance of the layer

But… how do we analyze the color of wine?

In this case, the how and when are answered in the same way: the layer. One of the phases that make up the wine tasting. To be exact, the visual phase.

The tasting, besides being a feast for the senses, is, in a way, like a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot investigation. Through different actions, we unravel the truth behind the wine. While the English detective novels found out who was the criminal in their cases, our mission during the tasting is to obtain as much information as possible to capture the soul of the wine in all its fullness.

Through layering we pay attention to three fundamental details of the wine: the color itself, the level of transparency, and the brightness. In this way, we can dissect in depth what the color of the wines is like.

To perform the layer, the glass should be held by its stem and tilted at 45 degrees. When carrying out this operation, the wine will be distributed throughout the glass differentiating two zones. The rim, the one closest to the rim, and the layer, which occupies the central part. Depending on how much we can see through the layer, the wine will be low, medium, or high layer:

• Low layer wines. They are the most transparent. They are often lighter wines or those that have lost chromatic intensity as a result of the passage of time. Younger white wines may have this color.
• Wines of the medium layer. These semi-transparent wines are mostly white wines, with a golden straw color.
• Wines of the high layer. We are talking about opaque wines, through whose layer cannot be seen. High-layer wines are usually more mature since the darkening can be generated by the absence of oxygen or the transfer of color by the wood.

Bearing all this in mind, the time has come to ask ourselves what is the color of Pazo Baión wines?

The different shades of yellow of Pazo Baión’s Albariños

Among all the factors that come into play in the color of the wines, the grape variety used to make them must be highlighted first of all. In the case of color of Pazo Baión wines, this fact is fundamental. The albariño grape variety is the main responsible for giving our wines a beautiful yellow color.

However, each one of them has its tonality. A reflection of their overflowing personality and the way they tell us, through visual perception, how they have been created. Let’s dive into the color of Pazo Baión wines.

Pazo Baión, elegance made wine and color

The winery’s flagship, Pazo Baión, is an elaboration that stands out, at first sight, for its straw yellow color with greenish reflections. A pure Albariño. Never better said. This color reflects the importance of the grape, the protagonist in the acidity that gives it structure, its varietal aromas, and its color.

All this has led to this single-estate Albariño being chosen as the Best Young White Wine of Spain in 2022 by the Gourmet Wine Guide. And it was awarded the Gold Medal by the Guía de Vinos, Bodegas y Destilados de Galicia. Two fantastic awards for a unique wine that, from the color to the smell passing, obviously, through the palate, has raised the characteristics of young wines to another level.

Vides de Fontán, a brilliant Grand Gold

The most mature of the Pazo Baión wines, Vides de Fontán, appears before the eyes of the person who is going to taste it as a bright yellow wine, which also has greenish reflections.

This interplay between color and brightness highlights two fundamental characteristics of a wine that has been aged for 3 years. On the one hand, the albariño grape variety from the Pazo Baión estate and, on the other, its maturation process.

Its bright yellow color transmits, from the sight, the brimming personality and complex structure of an elaboration in which the winemaking team of Pazo Baión has poured all its wisdom. A long-aged single-vineyard wine that has been awarded the Grand Gold Medal of the Guía de Vinos, Bodegas y Destilados de Galicia. Brilliant on the outside and inside.

Gran a Gran, a golden delicatessen

Finally, we would find Gran a Gran. An Albariño that attracts extraordinary attention when contemplated. Why? Because of its beautiful golden color, which makes it look almost like liquid gold.

This is largely due to the fact that we are talking about a late harvest wine. The grapes are harvested berry by berry, by hand, and with a meager production of partially raisined berries. These grapes, together with the complex winemaking process, result in a darker wine.

Thus, the golden color of Gran a Gran conveys something that becomes perceptible as soon as you taste it: it is a wine that is the product of raisining and the noble rotting of its grapes. A delicious Albariño perfect to accompany the most delicious desserts.

In short, the color of Pazo Baión wines is not a puerile or trivial matter. Just as the face is a reflection of a person’s soul, the chromatic composition of these wines tells us what they are like and what was the process that transformed the grapes into wine.

The color of Pazo Baión wines tells us three stories about three Albariño wines with five centuries of history. Three stories about three unique wines, with their aromas and winemaking and maturation processes.