Cangas

Styles

Principal grape varieties

Terroir

• The terrain is highly rugged, with a clear predominance of steep to very steep, even precipitous slopes, formed from Palaeozoic and Precambrian materials among the oldest in the Iberian Peninsula, with Precambrian slates being particularly prominent.
• The soils develop over slates and schists with a small sandy fraction contributed by sandstones, a pH close to neutral, and a mull-type humus horizon rich in organic matter, 20 to 25 cm thick.
• The Cantabrian Mountains act as a barrier, causing cloud stagnation on the northern slopes and producing a marked foehn effect that generates dry, superheated winds, with winters recording minima close to -10 °C and summers with maxima above 30 °C.
• Annual rainfall is around 1,000 mm, some 30% less than in the rest of Asturias, while solar radiation reaches up to 2,000 sunshine hours per year in some of the municipalities that make up the district.

• Vine cultivation in the area is documented from the ninth century, and its greatest expansion came with the founding in 1031/1032 of the Benedictine Monastery of San Juan Bautista de Corias.
• After the appearance of phylloxera at the end of the nineteenth century, the Provincial Council established a nursery in Cangas that supplied growers with rooted cuttings of American rootstocks, mainly rupestris, onto which the local varieties were grafted.

• The red wines show a bright cherry colour of low to medium depth of colour, with aromas of wild red fruits, forest undergrowth, and slates, and on the palate are fresh, low in tannin, and of medium length.
• The white wines are pale yellow with greenish highlights, with an intense, terpenic nose recalling stone fruits, pineapple, pear, apple, and white flowers, and on the palate are fruity, somewhat fat, with citrus and mineral notes.

• The stony soils, rich in slate, combined with the steep slopes, help regulate rainfall by preventing waterlogging while retaining the moisture needed at depth for the vines.

Facts drawn from the specification's terroir-link section by automatic interpretation — see the specification (pliego de condiciones).

All appellations in Spain

Sources

• National pliego de condiciones (PDF)
• eAmbrosia register (EU) — File number PDO-ES-A0119
• Official trade body site — D.O.P. Cangas