"Green wine" means young, not coloured: the wine of the rain-soaked Minho, in Portugal's far northwest, has always been made to be drunk within the year. In this crowded, garden-like country the vines once climbed trees and porch pergolas, leaving the ground below free for cabbages — viticulture stacked above subsistence.
The style follows the landscape: low alcohol, high acid, a saline prickle of gas, green apple and white flowers. Its serious upper register is alvarinho from Monção e Melgaço, on the Spanish border, where the grape gains flesh and the wines age. Carried abroad by the emigrant generations who wanted a taste of home, Vinho Verde became Portugal's summer in a bottle — one of the world's most refreshing answers to heat.