Winemaker Notes
Yellow with green tones. Fresh, light and exuberant, dominated by hints of citrus fruits and orange blossom. Fresh, lively, vibrant and with good body. Persistent and refreshing finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2024 Loureiro, with its iconic label, is their classical unoaked Loureiro that showcases their style and philosophy to represent the region, soils and variety. It's clean, sharp and precise, with purity, balance, freshness, citrus and mineral notes and a salty twist. This 2024 has 12% alcohol and a pH of 3.27. It comes from young vines, fermented in stainless steel with selected yeasts and had three months of bâtonnage and a further six months in tank before bottling. It's very pleasant and approachable now, and while the price point suggests it's a simple white for early consumption, these wines have a very good record for aging in bottle for 20 years in the finest vintages like I think this 2024 is. But with bottle age, the profile is very different, of course.
Dating back to the late 18th century, Loureiro is native to Iberian Peninsula, grown mostly within the Minho region, though has flourished currently into neighboring Galicia. It produces a dry, high-toned, crisp white wine, redolent with aromas of white flowers and bay leaves. The grape is essential to the production of Portugeuse Vinho Verde and white blends of the Spanish region Rias Baixas. Somm Secret—The word Loureiro means “laurel” in Portugeuse, conveying the wine’s bay leaf aromatics.
A cheerful, translucid, lemon-yellow and slightly pétillant white wine, Vinho Verde literally means ‘green wine’ and is named after the northwest Portugese region from which it originates. The ‘green’ in the name refers to the youthful state in which the wines are customarily released and consumed, not the color of the wine.
It is typically a blend of various percentages of Alvarinho, Loureiro, Trajadura, and Pedernã (Arinto). Following initial alcoholic fermentation, a natural, secondary malolactic conversion in cask produces carbon dioxide, giving Vinho Verde its charmingly light sparkle.