Best Albario Wines To Buy
Looking for a crispy, zingy white wine to sip on? Our wine expert gives her lowdown on the best albariño wines to buy, from zesty lime notes to bracing sea-breeze freshness
Looking for the best albariño wine? Want to know our pick of this Spanish grape? Read our expert guide then check out our favourite vineyards in the UK for tours, tastings and overnight stays among the vines.
Fun Facts About Albario
Where To Go For The Best Spanish Albario White Wine
Albarino is a white grape variety originating in Spain. Little known in the UK until a few years ago, this fantastic varietal can produce medium bodied, dry white wines, packed with ripe stone fruit and almond notes. It is a truly crowd-pleasing style, gaining popularity and recognition. The best Albarinos come from Rias Baixas, Spain and Portugals Vinho Verde. When the wine originates from Rias Baixas, they will be called Albarino.The wine panel, led by wine specialist Alexandra Hale, were looking for pleasing, elegant, fruit-driven white wines with well-balanced acidity and alcohol.
Score: 82/100Price: £6.29Score: 79/100Price: £8.50Score: 76/100Price: £6.50Score: 75/100Price: £8.00Score: 75/100Price: £7.18Score: 74/100Price: £9.99Score: 72/100Price: £8.49Score: 70/100Price: £8.28Score: 69/100Price: £8.00Score: 68/100Price: £7.99
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Key Producers Brands And Buying Tips
Albariño is frequently available at wine shops, on restaurant menus, and can sometimes be found in supermarkets and liquor stores. The white wine tends to be affordable, with options ranging from under $15 up to $50. Some balanced options from reputable wineries are available in the $15 to $20 range, and the wine is easily ordered online or through a shop if needed. While quality albariño wines are made in other parts of the world including California, look for bottles from Rías Baixas for a genuine experience. If you can’t find albariño, try a bottle of dry Gewürztraminer instead.
- Pazo San Mauro
Where Does Albario Grow
- Spain: ~32,500 acres / 13,150 hectares
- Portugal: ~14,300 acres / 5,782 hectares
- California: ~300 acres / 121 hectares
- Uruguay: ~150 acres / 60 hectares
- Others: Australia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil
Albariño performs well in cool and intermediate climates such as Galicia which experiences heavy Atlantic storms. Fortunately, the area offers 2000+ hours of growing degree days, making it possible to fully ripen Albariño.
Even with its thick skins and hardy vines, Albariño is sensitive to mildew and rot. Thus, in wet regions its important to keep the roots dry with well draining soils .
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How To Taste Wine
Follow a few steps when tasting wine to ensure you have the best experience:
Tasting Notes For Albario
Albariño is a dry, white wine with a complex aroma profile often including orange blossom, freshly cut grass, jasmine or geranium. Bursting with rich, ripe flavor, Albariño can show flavors of lime, pear, melon and white peach. The best examples boast zingy acidity and while typically fermented in stainless steel to preserve this purity, oak-aged examples can provide a weighty yet refreshing alternative to Chardonnay.
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Pazo Seorans Selection Anada 2011 13% 75cl
Pazo Senorans has built a reputation as one of the best albarino producers in Spain, routinely receiving scores of 90+ from Robert Parker, Decanter and other guides. This wine is a wonderful expression of albarinos strengths, creamy and structured with aromas of peach and nectarine and a mineral finish. If youre looking for a real treat, this the one to go for.
What Is Albarino Wine
Albariño is a white wine grape primarily grown in Spain’s Rías Baixas region. It is also grown in Portugal’s Vinho Verde region and in California’s central coast. The resulting light-bodied white wines are dry, relatively low alcohol, and refreshingly acidic, making them especially food-friendly and perfect for drinking on a hot day. Flavors and aromas of sweet melon, citrus, and honeysuckle are common.
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Food Pairing With Albario
Albariño wines pair excellently with ceviche and other seafood dishes with citrus and aromatic herbs. By Stu Spivack
Albariño is an excellent food pairing wine given its high acidity and slight bitterness , which allow it to act as a palate-cleanser to a wide variety of food textures . As a general rule, serve Albariño with light to middle intensity foods and especially with dishes that feature citrus and/or aromatic herbs. A few cuisines to explore with Albariño include Vietnamese, Thai, modern fresh Californian, California-style Sushi, and Caribbean seafood.
Examples
Albario Wine Regions To Explore
There are two main homes where Albariño can be widely found: Rías Baixas in Spain, and Vinho Verde in Portugal .
Rías Baixas
Flavors: Apricot, Melon, Peach, Honeysuckle, Grapefruit
The name Rías Baixas is Galician for Lower Rivers and there are four main rivers . Rías Baixas is divided into five sub-zones:
Each region has its own unique terroir, but all areas share a similar sandy, granitic
Rías Baixas is controlled by a wine commission called the Consejo Regulador. The Consejo maintains that all wineries and vineyards adhere to specific allowed varieties, methods of pruning and training, vine density , and how much fruit a vineyard yields.
There is also a strict tasting committee that samples all wines in Rías Baixas for quality assurance. Only wines that pass the Consejo test can be labeled Rías Baixas.
Vinho Verde
Other Regions
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Albario Finds Its Inner Beauty
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By Eric Asimov
Among the first wave of new grapes that came to define todays era of diversity in wine was albariño, from the Rías Baixas region of Galicia in northwestern Spain.
The wines were a novelty when they began showing up in Spanish restaurants in the United States in the early 1990s. The occasional mentions of them through the decade required pronunciation guides: al-bar-EEN-yo and REE-yas BUY-shas. In 1995, Frank J. Prial, then The New York Timess wine columnist, cautioned, Albariño is not an easy wine to find in this country.
In short time, though, it caught on, and helped pave the way for other then-unknown white wines to be welcomed onto the countrys wine list, like grüner veltliner of Austria, fiano dAvellino of Campania and assyrtiko of Santorini, as well as other Spanish whites like godello.
While albariño has proved consistently popular since then, it has rarely received much respect from those looking beyond crisp, cheerful whites.
Except for one or two small labels, many of the wines seemed generally to be inoffensive, made by producers who had taken the temperature of what the audience wanted and given them no more than that.
As with New Zealand sauvignon blanc, which arrived slightly earlier than albariño and became even more popular, the producers could aim low because it was a cash cow, successful in the marketplace but rarely interesting to those who paid careful attention to what they were drinking.
What Is Albario 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 its firmly established as one of Spains most favoured white wine grapes.
Its home is the coastal Rías Baixas region of Galicia , whose narrow estuaries, called rías, jut their craggy fingers into the Atlantic Ocean. Galicia is a long way from the parched plains and sun-soaked costas to the south the landscape here is green and lush, and rainfall is high. Its more reminiscent of the west coast of Ireland than of Alicante, and it shares more of Irelands 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 Galicias moribund wine industry, and albariño is now the jewel in its very successful crown.
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Best Albario Wines Under : Ten To Try
Planted in its heartland of Galicia, and particularly Rías Baixas, on Spains fresh north-western Atlantic coast,Albariño is an aromatic white grape variety that makes fresh, breezy wines.
In Portugal its known as Alvarinho and is used to make Vinho Verde wines, which have more citrus and green apple character than their peachy Spanish cousins.
For a long time, it was thought that Albariño was related to Savagnin from Jura, but DNA analysis proved this also incorrect, wrote Pedro Ballesteros Torres, about the origins of the variety.
However, good value Albariño wines can now be found all over the winemaking world, in locations as unexpected as Uruguay, New Zealand and the United States.
Ranging from light and minerally to fuller-bodied with intense stone fruit character, they all share a high level of acidity which makes them perfect wines to drink in the summer months.
Try one of the Albariños below with light summer dishes and salads.
Albariños also make a particularly good pairing with fish and seafood, from sea bream and hake to squid and sardines, as well as fruits de mer platters.
Look out for our Albariño vs Alvarinho panel tasting in the September issue of Decanter, on sale early August.
Minerally With Citrus Flavors
½ Do Ferreiro Rías Baixas Albariño Cepas Vellas 2015 $50
Taut, tense, complex and deep, with great mineral flavors. Clearly benefited from extra aging.
Adega Familiar Eladio Piñeiro Rías Baixas Albariño Envidiacochina Tête de Cuvée 2017 $24
Rich and substantial, yet tense and linear, with citrus, floral and mineral flavors.
Bodegas Aquitania Rías Baixas Albariño Aquitania 2017 $24
Tangy, textured, resonant and deep, with citrus and saline flavors.
Bodegas Palacio de Fefiñanes Rías Baixas Albariño de Fefiñanes 2017 $25
Rich, textured and deeply mineral, with citrus, herbal and floral aromas and flavors.
½ Raúl Pérez Sketch Albariño 2017 $80
Deep and rich, with flavors of Meyer lemons and flowers. Its on the edge of overripeness, but never strays over the line.
½ Alberto Nanclares Rías Baixas Albariño 2017 $34
Fresh, briny and textured, with citrus, herb and mineral flavors.
Best Value
½ Benito Santos Rías Baixas Albariño Igrexario de Saiar 2018 $18
Tense and fresh, with aromas of flowers and saline and citrus flavors.
½ Leirana Rías Baixas Albariño Forjas del Salnes 2017 $30
Bright yet tightly coiled, with steely acidity aromas and flavors of flowers and citrus.
½ Bodegas La Caña Rías Baixas Albariño 2017 $20
Richly textured and deep, with lingering lime and mineral flavors.
½ Zarate Rías Baixas Albariño Val do Salnes 2017 $22
Tangy, lively and lush with citrus and peach flavors.
Pairings: Fettuccine With Lobster and Zucchini
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Grapes And Wine Regions
Albariño is best known as a Spanish white wine grape grown in the five subregions of Rías Baixas. Characteristics in the wines can differ depending on the region, with inland vineyards producing fruitier wines and coastal vineyards producing wines with more salinity. It is also grown in other Spanish wine regions like Ribeiro, Ribeira Sacra, and Monterrei, where is often blended with other grapes like Loureiro and Godello. Portugal also grows a notable amount of albariño, but often blends the grape with other white wine grapes.
The hardy vines are traditionally grown on overhead pergolas, protecting the thin-skinned, small grapes from mildew and rot. The grapevines prefer well-draining sandy or granite soils on land that experiences cool, coastal climates with sunny days. Albariño has a summer growing season and is usually harvested from early September to mid-October, depending on the region and weather conditions. Vines are typically low-yield.
Learn About Albario Wine And How To Find Quality
Albariño wine is a high-quality, light-bodied white that grows mostly in Spain and Portugal. Its loved for its high acidity, refreshing citrus flavors, dry taste, and subtle saltiness. For seafood lovers, Albariño is a fantastic choice for pairing with exquisite dishes like ceviche, fish tacos, seafood pasta, and shrimp.
Albariño: The Seafood Lovers Wine
Find out more about Albariño wine, including how to serve it, what foods pair best with it, and its geographical origin.
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Taste And Flavor Profile
Albariño is a dry white wine with aromas of citrus and peach. On the palate, the wine can exhibit characteristics of grapefruit, lemon peel, apricot, and sweet melon. Because the grapes tend to grow in coastal regions, they can also have a touch of salinity. Some wines may exhibit a slightly bitter finish, similar to citrus pith. Overall, albariño is light-bodied and low in tannins but high in acid. The high acidity makes this wine refreshingly mouth-watering and best served well-chilled. Albariño should be drunk while young since the wine can develop undesirable flavors if left in the bottle for too long.
When Pigs Fly
Jared Rallisons friends and family were utterly incredulous when they heard he wanted to be a winemaker. More than one said, When pigs fly! when he told them of his dream.
After all, he lived in Utah, had a full-time job as a pharmaceutical executive, and was the father of three young girls. When pigs fly, indeed. But dreams dont die.
After trying to make wine in Utah, Jared and his family moved to Sherwood, Oregon, and found a place to plant some grapes. When he finished that first bottling, his family gave him a flying pig weathervane to put atop the winery built next to the Rallison family home.
And wouldnt you know, just a few weeks before we first visited in November 2014, a huge windstorm came through and the pig was ripped from the roof, took flight, and landed in the vineyard. When pigs fly, indeed!
We featured Jareds wine in our very first month and its been so fun to watch him grow from just 800 cases to over 2000 today. And last summer, he opened his very own tasting room in charming downtown Sherwood.
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