Albariño

Albariño is the white grape of Rías Baixas in Galicia, on Spain's rainy Atlantic north west coast, and of the Vinho Verde region immediately across the Minho river in Portugal, where it is spelled alvarinho. It is a thick-skinned variety with a high pip-to-pulp ratio, which matters in a place that gets over 1,500 millimetres of rain a year, because thick skins resist rot.

The wine is high in acidity, low to moderate in alcohol, and marked by grapefruit, white peach, and a saline, almost briny quality that is genuinely unusual in a white grape. The thick skins also mean it gives more phenolic texture than most aromatic whites, so a good albariño has grip as well as freshness. It was long assumed to be related to riesling; DNA work has found no such link.

Traditionally it is trained on high pergolas, the parra, to lift the fruit off wet ground and let air move underneath. Most is made in stainless steel and sold young, but a small number of producers age it on lees or in old oak, and those versions keep for a decade. Monção e Melgaço in Portugal makes the most structured examples.