Viva vino albariño!

O’s wine expert, Kate Hawkings, on the charms of this crisp, zingy white wine

Whisper ‘albariño’ into the ear of any lover of Spanish wine and watch their eyes light up. Characterised by its aromatic peachiness, citric zip and saline minerality, crowd-pleasing albariño was once very much a wine geek secret. Now it’s firmly established as one of Spain’s most favoured white wine grapes.

Its home is the coastal Rías Baixas region of Galicia (on the northwest tip of Spain), whose narrow estuaries, called rías, jut their craggy fingers into the Atlantic Ocean. Galicia is a long way from the parched plains and sunsoaked costas to the south – the landscape here is green and lush, and rainfall is high. It’s more reminiscent of the west coast of Ireland than of Alicante, and it shares more of Ireland’s Celtic cultural roots than those of the rest of Spain.

Although albariño has been grown here since Roman times, it flourished from the 12th century onwards, quenching the thirsts of countless pilgrims en route to the holy city of Santiago de Compostela. But the late 1800s saw devastating population and economic decline, and most vineyards were abandoned. The tide of fortune turned when Spain joined the EU in 1986. Funds were made available for huge investments in Galicia’s moribund wine industry, and albariño is now the jewel in its very successful crown.

It makes a bullseye match with any of the brilliant Galician seafood found there in abundance. Fishing has been the mainstay of the economy for hundreds of years, and because fishermen would be at sea for weeks on end, it was the women who tended the vines and made the wine. It’s a tradition that continues today – many of the best producers have female winemakers at their helm.

In neighbouring Vinho Verde, in the north of Portugal, the wine is known as alvarinho and is often blended in those light, spritzy wines most associated with the region – or, increasingly, made into serious, single-varietal wines that really shine. If you can’t get to the seaside this spring, grab an albariño and let the seaside come to you. Shellfish, sunglasses and swimsuits optional.

Kate Hawkings is a writer and wine consultant. Her debut book, Aperitif, was published in 2018. Follow her on Twitter @katehawkings.

Omagazine.com

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