A Minho River A l v a r i n h o

When moving somewhere new, it is essential to find your favorite local wine shop early on, or maybe this is just something I need. I luckily found a fantastic wine shop right down the street from me pretty early on. You may be asking, what on earth does this have to do with Alvarinho wine, well, it does, just stay with me. I have been taking a deep dive into Portuguese wines lately and a lot of shops in America don’t carry many wines from Portugal. However, my local wine shop, Cork and Cracker is fantastic and they already carry more Portuguese wines than anyone else around me. If they don’t have a specific bottle I am looking for they bring it in for me, which is beyond awesome. Another way they stand out for me as someone always wanting to continue my wine education journey, is that they carry wines from regions that aren’t as popular in most wine shops in America. You can find obscure regions and grapes that most people haven’t tried before, they like to help their customers find new wines and regions based on the classics they do like. Anyway, this was just a little side note about how important I think having a local wine shop that doesn’t just bring in mass produced wines found everywhere is. If you want to get into wine, you need to step away from the brands you know well, that is where the fun really begins. So now, moving on to an Alvarinho wine I found there recently.

photo credit: vinhoverde.pt

Some say the best Alvarinho grapes are grown in the northwestern villages of Monçāo and Melgaço, next to the border of Spain. If you look at the map above, the top right section of Vinho Verde is Monçāo and Melgaço, it is a subregion in Vinho Verde, the dominate white grapes grown here are Alvarinho, Loureiro and Trajadura. The grapes grow in the valley along the River Minho and its tributaries as well as on the slopes of mountains. The area has hot days and cool nights, helping the grapes retain aromas and freshness and making it a great micro climate for Alvarinho to grow in. Alvarinho grapes are small and thick skinned, they need warmth to ripen and in some areas they use pergola systems to train the vines so they are protected from rot due to rain and for airflow. This area does not see as much influence from the Atlantic as other areas in Vinho Verde and the mountains help the area stay dry from heavy rainfall.

So how do you know if the people that claim this region to be the best for Alvarinho are correct, you try, try, try them all. Obviously, I cannot get my hands on most of the wines produced in this region, as most are small producers and not available outside of Portugal. This just means a trip to Portugal is in my future, or in fact, many. So until my trips to Portugal begin, I will be tasting and trying all the Portuguese wines I can get ahold of in Indiana.

Alvarinho wines from this sub-region have the potential for aging due to their high acidity. The wine is fantastic young, right now, on day one it was effervescent, fruit forward, oily and full of saline and minerality. I drank it over three days, not using any fancy storing system, just the screw cap and my wine fridge. After the first day, the effervescence was gone, but the wine remained very good. I paired it with burrata cheese and cherry tomatoes and the experience was terrific. The creamy nature of the cheese meshed well with the salinity of the wine and the acid in the tomatoes and the wine were so similar it made the salinity and fruit flavors come alive. Sometimes the most simple food items can pair so nicely with a wine, which is part of what I love about my daily explorations into the wine world. You need to be brave when pairing wine and food (and dessert), break the rules sometimes, your palate is different than every single other person alive. My best advice is try and fail, keep trying, because for every bad pairing you will find that one epic pairing that makes it so worthwhile. Just have fun, and honestly, when in doubt refer back to the most simplistic pairing ideas, negative reactions and positive reactions.

Nortico is made from grapes from sustainably farmed small plots of vineyards called jardins around the villages of Monçāo and Melgaço. The soil is granite and the jardins range from 20-250 meter of elevation. Unlike many white wines from the Vinho Verde region, no CO2 has been added to the wine. The grapes go through a long and cool fermentation, they are racked, go through a primary filtration and are cold stabilized. The wine spends four months in stainless steel and are filtered prior to bottling.

photo credit: Olé & Obrigado

photo credit: Olé & Obrigado

As an artist, I find this label extremely stunning. I always have had a love for Portuguese tiles, the art form is truly special, for someone who has dedicated the majority of her life to practicing art full time, I know how much time goes into such small detailed pieces. I also know that money is not the reason you do it, you do them because you have to, art is a calling. Wine is an art form so it is only natural the label should be a reflection of that art.

When I started researching this bottle, I fell in love with this quote I found from Rui Abecassis, the founder of Obrigado on their website, “Nortico Alvarinho is one of those projects that has been in the making for quite some time. It started in my family's small tile atelier, where I learned to love tiles. The traditional ceramic tile atelier was more a labor of passion and tenacity than business … [and] to this day, tiles are produced exactly like in the 18th century, each shaped from scratch and painted by hand. Walking the streets of Oporto or Lisboa you may encounter tiles on both modest and important buildings. Tiles are a durable building material, and an early form of storytelling and graphic design. We wanted the Nortico label to evoke those tiles to capture that spirit and Portuguese aesthetics.” If this doesn’t make you appreciate not just the time that went into the wine, but the time, talent and design process that brought this label to light, maybe just taking that first sip of it will. I hope you get to appreciate the beauty this bottle has to offer, inside and out one day.