In the Minho the vines hang over the road. They climb granite pillars in pergolas, the ramadas, scramble up plane trees and poplars, the vinha de enforcado, and edge the maize fields and cabbage gardens. So the grapes grew above the damp ground, in the wind, in one of the wettest corners of Europe: often more than 1,200 millimetres fall in a year. The soils are almost everywhere granite, as they are across the border river Minho in Rías Baixas. The region’s roughly 16,000 hectares are split among some 20,000 growers and nine sub-regions: Monção e Melgaço, Lima, Cávado, Ave, Basto, Sousa, Amarante, Baião and Paiva. The region was demarcated in 1908, among the first in the country after the Douro; the wine commission CVRVV, based in Porto, has existed since 1926.
Green means young
“Verde” refers not to the colour but to the age: Vinho Verde is young wine, bottled within months of the harvest and drunk soon. The classic white has 8.5 to 11 per cent alcohol, plenty of acidity and a slight prickle. It once arose by itself when the wine finished its malolactic fermentation in the bottle; today most cellars add the carbon dioxide before bottling. Loureiro, “laurel”, brings lime and blossom and is happiest close to the Atlantic and in the Lima valley; Arinto, called Pedernã here, brings acidity, Trajadura rounds off the blends, Avesso from Baião and Amarante inland gives peach and body, Azal citrus freshness.
In the glass
The grape the region is known for, by sweetness, acidity, tannin and body.
| Grape | Sweetness | Acidity | Tannin | Body |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albariño | dry | medium(+) to high | white, no tannin | medium(−) to medium |
Each grape’s typical range worldwide, not in this region alone, on the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022): dry to luscious, low to high, light to full. The dot before each name shows the colour of a typical bottle.
Alvarinho on the border river
In the far north, in Monção e Melgaço on the Minho, grows Alvarinho, the same grape as the Albariño on the opposite bank. The valley is sheltered from the Atlantic by mountains, warmer and drier, and the wine is a different one: single-variety, 11.5 to 14 per cent, with peach, grapefruit and tangerine, sturdy enough for years in the cellar. Monção e Melgaço was the first of the nine sub-regions to receive a guarantee seal of its own. Finally the red Vinhão, the leading red grape, is almost violet, sharp and tannic; in the tascas of the Minho it is served cool from white ceramic bowls, the malgas, whose whiteness makes the colour glow.
Sense of scale
16,000 ha Vinho Verde has about 1.1× as many vines as all of Switzerland.
One square is all of Switzerland: about 14,350 hectares of vines.
Vineyards compared
Vineyard area in hectares, rounded, as the articles give it. Regions without a reliable figure are left out.
Half of it leaves the country
Vinho Verde is an export wine: by the late 2010s more than half of its sales went abroad, above all to the United States and Germany. Switzerland, too, has long been one of its main markets. Wine from this region was leaving the northern ports as early as the 14th century, the first Portuguese wine to be exported, according to the regional commission.
With sardines and bacalhau
What to drink: the light white well chilled at 8 to 10 degrees with grilled sardines, bacalhau, shellfish, caldo verde or sushi; an Alvarinho at 10 to 12 degrees with pan-fried fish or chicken; the Vinhão cool with chouriço and fatty roast pork.