Ladies and Gentlemen Mr Al Barino!

I know- I should be shot for the amount of cheesy puns in my titles but i swear i can't help it! And yes that's Dean Martin in the photo and not Mr Al Barino ... Anyways as you may (or may not) have guessed this blog is all about Albarino. Now some may say that Verdejo is the king of Spanish whites... and this may still be the case but i just think that Albarino brings something a little different to the table! Don't by any means get me wrong- Verdejo is fantastic, its actually a close relative of Sauvignon Blanc! (and for that reason i would say that for anyone sick of Sauvignon Blanc, like i alluded to in my last blog, then i would strongly suggest trying some Verdejo!) But this blog is not entitled Mr Ver Dejo so we'll get back to the business at hand! So whats so special about Albarino??? Well its not unheard of for people to come in to us looking for something a little different from time to time! Now usually its a different type of style or a slightly different variety from one variety to the next... but the odd time we get someone looking to go the opposite direction all together! As in switch from red wine to white! Now there are certain thing this entails- number 1, they want it full bodied, number 2, they want it relatively dry, and 3 they are pretty open to suggestion. And that's where Albarino strolls in to the equation!
Basically Albarino is a big thick skinned grape grown mostly a long the west coast of Spain and Portugal. Now the reason it thrives here is because of it thick skin- it can withstand a lot of sun, and humidity, and as you can imagine it plumps up into these big juicy white wines. Its actually because of this thick skin that they tend to be very aromatic wines with really rich flavours of peach and apricot. But the Albarino is at its absolute best when matched with seafood! So does this make Albarino the grape of choice for this summer for our red wine drinkers??? I think it might...
One last little side note, we started our promotion today on Spanish and Portuguese wines (we've gone for the title of Iberian Superstars!) and as usual there is a lot of very good wines to be had! So that's why we had a blog on the Spanish and Portuguese variety today, and over the next couple of weeks we'll be having a few more informative little blogs on Spanish and Portuguese wines! Anyways look forward to seeing ye in the shop and talk to ye soon!