In Galicia, the green, rain-washed corner of north-west Spain, albariño grows on stone-pillared pergolas, lifted above the damp ground, looking down on the rías — the drowned river valleys where some of Europe's best shellfish is raised. The village of Cambados has held an albariño festival since 1953, when the wine was a local pride barely known beyond the province.
The Rías Baixas denomination arrived in 1988, and within a generation the wine travelled from that festival to the fish restaurants of the world: white peach and grapefruit over a saline snap, the natural partner of oysters, clams and octopus drawn from the same cold water the vines overlook.