Soalheiro, Primeiras Vinhas Alvarinho, Monção e Melgaço, Vinho Verde, Portugal 2019

With two wines in our top 50 Best In Show, Alvarinho/Albarino is one of this year’s champion grape varieties. The hallmark of a great grape variety, though, resembles that of a great actor: the ability to subsume its own personality inside that of the place (or the character) it is representing or portraying. Compare this (our first ever Best In Show Vinho Verde) with its Galician peer, and you will see a clear difference. This Portuguese wine is much quieter aromatically -- but haunting and tenacious, with hints of linden blossom and wet stone. It’s concentrated, cool, sheer, tongue-freshening … yet tenacious once again, with the presence and force of character which typifies its Moncao e Melgaco origins. That impression of a cool, wet granite landscape somehow conveyed by the wine lingers all the way through the long finish.

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