This low-alcohol style remains one of the great bargains in all of wine
Portuguese vinho verde is an affordable dupe of Basque txakolis. With a relatively low alcohol content and a slight fizziness, as in this bottle from Aveleda, it's easy to drink on a warm day.
Aveleda “Fonte” Vinho Verde
Minho, Portugal
$8.99 9.5% alcohol
PLCB Item #6163
Sale price; regularly $11.99
Low-alcohol wines are hot these days. While the jet set are sipping on rare and pricey specialty wines like txakolis from Spain’s Basque Country, bargain shoppers can find strikingly similar wines like this vinho verde from Portugal for half or even a third of the price.
Basque txakolinas are made from under-ripe grapes grown along Spain’s moist and chilly Atlantic coastline, not far from the northern end of its border with France. These wines taste sharply tart — the style reference “txakoli” means “sour wine” — because their grapes are harvested with very low sugar content. Considerably less alcohol than usual is also produced during fermentation as a result, yielding uncommonly light wines that contain only 10% alcohol. Over the centuries, local winemakers learned to seal their barrels toward the end of fermentation to trap a little natural carbonation since keeping the wine slightly fizzy helped to preserve the wine’s flavor and added tongue-tingling refreshment as well.
Txakoli wines are expensive because they are made in vanishingly small quantities from native Basque grapes that are grown nowhere else. However, similar climate conditions are found along the Atlantic coastline of northern Portugal’s Minho region, allowing anyone to access an affordable style dupe. Portuguese vinho verde, or green wine, is one of the best bargains to be found in the wine world. These wines are made using a mix of native Portuguese grapes but otherwise follow the same Basque methodology of harvesting early and preserving a little carbonation to yield a spritzy low-alcohol, high-acid wine.
This widely available brand is made by the region’s largest producer, blending fragrant loureiro grapes with smaller amounts of more neutral trajadura, arinto and fernão pires. It tastes like a refreshing white wine spritzer garnished with lemongrass and a slice of grapefruit. At only 9.5% alcohol, its faint hint of sweetness and blitz of bubbles make it easy to drink on a warm day, and at this price you won’t feel guilty opening a second bottle.
Also available at:
Canal’s Discount Liquors in Mt. Ephraim, $7.99
Total Wine & More in Wilmington and Claymont, $11.99