The French Laundry Poured It
By The Glass All Year.

Dear Artisans,

There are maybe three restaurants in America whose by-the-glass list functions as a buying signal for the entire trade. The French Laundry is one of them. All through 2025 the white they poured by the glass was the Leirana — from a garage winery in Val do Salnes that most American drinkers have never heard of.

When they rotated it off the list this year, we moved on the allocation.

You sold us out of the last one. Fifty-six cases.

This vintage is better. That is not a sentence I write often, and I would not write it about a wine we are asking you to buy fifty-six cases of again if it were not true.

The man behind it is Rodrigo Mendez, known to everyone in Galicia as Rodri. Fifth generation. His grandfather helped found the Rias Baixas appellation, and his family runs Do Ferreiro, the old-guard estate that is the second wine in this email. In the 1970s, while every other farmer in the valley was ripping out red vines to plant fashionable Albarino, the Mendez family was doing the opposite. Rodri started Forjas del Salnes in 2005 to finish what his grandfather began — graft back the nearly extinct coastal reds, and make whites that were not built for the tourist trade.

The Leirana comes off vines planted between 1952 and 1982, in pure granite, roughly five metres above the Atlantic. Native yeasts, seventy percent neutral foudre, no malolactic. What you get is not the bright, thin, drink-it-cold-and-forget-it Albarino that fills most shelves. It has weight, it has salt, and it has a spine.

Forjas del Salnes "Leirana" 2025

Five metres above sea level, on granite with a rocky alluvial cap — the kind of site that gives you precision instead of fat. Freshly cut grass, white flowers, sea breeze. Then a pungent, granitic palate with a fine thread of acid running down the middle and a salty twist at the close. Skipping malolactic keeps every bit of that nerve intact. Oysters, scallops, and if you want to do it properly, pulpo gallego with paprika and coarse salt.

Case pricing applies automatically at checkout. Code ALBARINO comes off on top of it.

Do Ferreiro Albarino 2024

This is Rodri's family estate, and it is the wine the rest of Rias Baixas is measured against. The fruit comes from 164 small parcels scattered across Cambados, Castrelo, Meano, Ribadumia and Sanxenxo — an absurd way to farm, and exactly why the wine has the range it does. Very dry, very Salnes: citrus, lime, wet stones, a stony mineral core, and enough structure to develop in bottle for ten years or more. If the Leirana is the precision instrument, this is the complete sentence.

La Cana "Navia" Albarino 2024

Almost every Albarino you have tasted was made in stainless steel. This one is what the grape looked like before stainless arrived in Galicia, fermented and aged in 500 and 600 litre chestnut puncheons with biweekly batonnage. Chestnut is softer than oak and more aromatic — and it is the wood Jorge Ordonez found in Rias Baixas when he became the first person to export Albarino to America. Two plots: Finca Iglesario in Meano, planted 1970, and Finca Playa in Cambados, planted 1978. Both dry-farmed, pergola-trained, worked entirely by hand. Ripe pear, white peach, chestnut spice, a creamy lees-driven middle, and a long saline close. Jeb Dunnuck gives it a drinking window out to 2038. Twelve years, on an Albarino.

Buy the Leirana by the case.
You did last time.

Fifty-six cases of the last vintage went out this door, and the wine landing tomorrow is a step up from it. Twelve bottles brings you to $29.99 before the code — which for a wine that spent 2025 on the by-the-glass list at the best restaurant in the country is not a decision that needs much thinking. Code ALBARINO, 5% off, through Thursday at 11:59 PM.

Salud,

— James Tran

Code ALBARINO ends Thursday 11:59 PM PT · call 650-917-8080, text 650-880-3553, or chat with us