Albariño

Albariño is the grape of Rías Baixas, on the Atlantic coast of Galicia in Spain's damp, green north-west, and Alvarinho across the border in Portugal's Monção e Melgaço. It is the same variety, and it produces one of the most distinctive dry whites in Iberia.

The conditions are Atlantic rather than Mediterranean: heavy rainfall, granite soils, ocean air and constant humidity. Albariño survives that because it has unusually thick skins for a white grape, which resist the rot that the climate encourages. Those same thick skins give the wine its phenolic weight and a faintly bitter, grippy texture that separates it from other aromatic whites.

Vines are traditionally trained on high granite pergolas — parras — that lift the fruit into moving air and let the ground beneath be used for other crops.

The wine is aromatic without being showy: white peach, nectarine, lemon, grapefruit, with a floral lift and a pronounced saline, mineral finish that people invariably attribute to the sea. Acidity is high and the body is fuller than the aromatics suggest.

Most is made in steel and drunk young, but a growing number of producers use extended lees ageing, old barrels or amphorae, and those wines develop a honeyed, nutty complexity and repay five years or more in bottle — which contradicts the standard advice to drink Albariño within a year.

The pairing with shellfish is close to automatic in Galicia, and with good reason.

The thick skins that protect it from Atlantic rot also make it prone to phenolic bitterness if pressed hard, and careful, gentle pressing is one of the main things separating a good Albariño from a coarse one.

The question of whether it ages is now largely settled. The conventional advice was to drink it within a year, which suited a market buying it as a summer white, but producers using extended lees contact, large old barrels or amphorae have shown it develops a honeyed, nutty complexity over five to ten years while keeping its acidity. Those wines are still a small minority of production.

It is frequently described as Spain's answer to Riesling or to Chablis, and neither comparison is much use. The saline, faintly bitter, stone-fruited profile is its own, and the closest relative in character is probably a serious Vinho Verde from the Portuguese side of the same river.