With summer here there is a need for some fresh, lively, not so heavy summer wine. Vinho Verde is a Portuguese wine that has all of those things going on, plus it tends to be a little lower alcohol; so you can have a couple without getting too tipsy!

Vinho Verde originally comes from the Minho region in the northern part of Portugal, and now includes some more regions to the south. Vinho Verde translates to green wine which essentially means; young wine. It can be produced in Red, White and Rose form but the majority of Vinho Verde you find around here is white. During the early years of production, some malolactic fermentation was happening in the bottle which is generally considered a fault; but they found that the slight effervescence that was happening because of this was actually quite pleasant. These wines are meant to be drank young, often encouraged to be had as soon as possible; fresher the better.

The white Vinho Verde’s are known to be light and fresh due to the natural acidity they get out of the grapes (Loureiro, Arinto, Trajadura, Avesso and Aval). The wines are sort of naturally lower alcohol and tend to be between 8% and 11%. One interesting note is because of agriculture in the region, the vines tend to be trained very high to allow for growth of other crops underneath. Harvesting requires ladders in many cases. This also helps with keeping the grapes from rotting because of high annual rainfall in the region.

We have 3 white Vinho Verdes available at the store currently…

Brisa do Mar
Gazela
Casal Garcia

Come in and try one of these nice summer semi sparkling wines; a real treat for a hot day in the summer.

Nick,

Wine Buyer