Winemaker Notes
Very complex wine with great balance and style. This rich concentrated wine, is packed with intense aromas of citrus, apple, pear and floral scents with a tropical background. The palate is full-bodied and voluminous, with a fresh and vibrant acidity and great minerality.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Foral de Melgaço Old Vines (40+ years) is an Alvarinho that comes in dry, without fizz and at 12.9% alcohol. Aromatic and expressive in its youth, this is super today, well balanced, tasty and adequate at least in mid-palate depth. I always wonder how well these will age and develop, which they should do to justify some of my typical enthusiasm for the brand—in Vinho Verde, you don't get to claim to be great any more if your wines fall apart in two years—but this seems capable of aging well throughout the decade, maybe more. It is certainly lovely today, and when tasted again the next day, it retained all its fruit while showing more of its structure. It is downright irresistible with the potential to improve. Let's lean up for the moment.
Bright and aromatic with distinctive floral and fruity characteristics, Albariño has enjoyed a surge in popularity and an increase in plantings over the last couple of decades. Thick skins allow it to withstand the humid conditions of its homeland, Rías Baixas, Spain, free of malady, and produce a weighty but fresh white. Somm Secret—Albariño claims dual citizenship in Spain and Portugal. Under the name Alvarinho, it thrives in Portugal’s northwestern Vinho Verde region, which predictably, borders part of Spain’s Rías Baixas.
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.