The Vinho Verde Evolution

Let's dig into it, because I did my sommelier training, as people see my gray hair, quite a while ago.

And at that time, you know, if you were given a vino verde on a wine tasting exam, we're looking for that one, that little spritzy, light and fresh wine and say, oh, great, I got it.

But over the last two decades, the region has moved well beyond this kind of simple image of those young, fresh, slightly frizzante, slightly spritzy wines.

And now we're seeing greater focus on varietal identity, sub-regional expression, and even some really ambitious winemaking.

So, what do you think really drove that shift? Because, you know, there was a 20, 30 years ago, you know, Fennel Verde, largely, I think, it was fairly industrial, fairly commercial, fairly definable in this kind of style that the market was delivering.

What do you think was driving this, you know, incredible change in that region? Because it is a region I think of in the world where We really can say that change and evolution has really happened in the last two decades.

I think that, well, in life, there is nothing more constant than change, and change is what happened on the Vinho Verde region, because maybe 40 years ago, it was a region more dedicated to rats, and that's out of history at the moment.

Nobody remembers it, but it was what it was.

And then maybe back in the 80s, early 90s, there was this shift into white, into what you just described as what I can frame as a classic wing of it, like low in alcohol, some spritziness, light bodied.

But at the same time, there is a huge array of different grapes that are allowed in the region and that exist in the region.

And there are also, in combination with those grapes, different sub-regional identities.

And people start to play around with it.

And it was the market that drove that shift.

It's always the market.

So there is a stable and relevant relationship.

uh commercial category for for that classic vineyard that's pretty easy going white wine but at the same time you have the know-how you have the raw material which are the grapes and the sites that there are the human factor that knows how to build more complex and more expressive white wines based in a great array of grapes at the moment the region is more dedicated to whites then to Red's and plenty of different grape varietals of course the leading one maybe Loureiro and Alvarinho but then you have plenty of others and so once again it was a push from the market that requested something else from Vinho Verde and Vinho Verde could deliver it and that's