The story of Xialma · Ribeira Sacra, River Miño
Some places are not simply visited. They stay with you.
Xialma was born from the need to preserve a landscape, a memory and a way of seeing the world.
Xialma began long before there was a bottle.
It began by returning to the land, slowing down and understanding that the landscape above the Miño was more than scenery. It was memory, family, craft and a way of being in the world. Wine came later, as a way to preserve all of that and share it.
01 · The gaze
A professional eye behind Xialma.
Behind Xialma is me, Xaime Cortizo, a photographer and visual communicator with more than fifteen years of established and recognised professional experience across different areas of photography and visual communication. Over the years I have worked across culture, tourism, gastronomy, corporate communication, portraiture, territory and wine, developing a distinctive visual language built around light, emotion and respect for places and people.
Photography taught me to observe, wait and recognise what truly matters. In the vineyard I found the same way of seeing: listening to the landscape, understanding its rhythms, and knowing when to intervene and when to let nature speak.
Xialma was born where those two experiences meet. It is my most personal project: a way of transforming landscape, memory and time into wine.
Each bottle is, in a way, another way of photographing Ribeira Sacra: not with a camera, but with land, time and wine.
Photographer · Visual communication
15+ years of professional experienceCulture · Tourism · Gastronomy · Corporate · Portraiture · Territory · Wine
Explore my professional workLa Voz de Galicia
«La fotografía captura la luz del instante, el vino la del año entero»
Xaime Cortizo · photographer and winegrower · La Voz de Galicia · 22 February 2026
Read the interview in La Voz de Galicia02 · The name
A name with a family inside it.
Xialma is a name born close to home, almost in a whisper. Within it lives something personal, a shared memory and the quiet echo of those who belong to this story. But above all, there is one word holding everything together: **soul**. The soul of the land, of family, of landscape and of time. Because Xialma is not meant to be simply a name on a label. It seeks to preserve what cannot always be seen: roots, affection, silence, the places we always return to, and everything that remains as the years pass. A name for what endures. For what belongs to us. For what we carry within.
Paisaxe en botella. Landscape in a bottle.
03 · The land
Two vineyards. One river.
Xialma is shaped around two small, singular vineyards, separated by approximately ten kilometres along the course of the River Miño. Two human-scale plots, one on each bank of the river, belonging to two distinct areas of Ribeira Sacra: Ribeiras do Miño and Chantada. Between them, the river draws the invisible thread that holds the story together. Ten kilometres of water, terraces, stone, woodland and changing light, where every bend reshapes the landscape and each vineyard reveals a character of its own.
They are not two isolated places, but two perspectives on the same territory. The Miño separates them and, at the same time, connects them, carrying climate, memory and landscape between one vineyard and the other. Xialma is born from that dialogue: from the individuality of each vineyard and from the relationship between them. We do not seek to make the landscape uniform. We seek to listen to it, interpret it and preserve something of its soul in every bottle.
04 · The wine
Making wine without erasing where it came from.
Xialma begins with a simple principle: intervene only when necessary and listen carefully. Spontaneous fermentation, patient cellar work and time in French oak are intended to accompany the wine rather than hide what comes from the vineyard.
The result seeks freshness, elegance and depth. A red we sometimes describe as “a red with the soul of a white”, because finesse and energy matter more than sheer power.
- Origin
- Ribeira Sacra · River Miño
- Winemaking
- Spontaneous fermentation
- Ageing
- French oak
- Scale
- Limited edition
05 · The first vintage
1,560 bottles and a leap into the unknown.
When the first bottles were finally ready and individually numbered, Xialma stopped being an idea. Each bottle carried months of work, decisions, doubts, harvests, photographs and afternoons looking towards the Miño. It carried a part of this story.
06 · A first recognition
Gold Medal · Paadín Guide 2026.
The recognition for the first vintage mattered, but what it represented mattered even more: confirmation that a deeply personal story could also move people who had never stood in our vineyards. That the landscape we had tried to preserve inside a bottle could be understood from the other side of a glass.
07 · What comes next
This story has only just begun.
Every harvest teaches us something more about the vineyards. We continue recovering, planting, observing and learning. And we continue imagining ways of sharing Xialma around a table, during a tasting or while walking among the vines as the Miño appears and disappears through the landscape.
Because Xialma wants to be wine, but also an experience. A meeting point between wine, photography, art, gastronomy, landscape and people.
Perhaps true luxury today is knowing where things come from, knowing who is behind them and having the time to enjoy them.