Albarino of Rias Baixas

Rias Baixas received its designation in 1988 and grows mainly Albarino, a thick-skinned white grape suited to a climate that delivers well over a thousand millimetres of rain a year. The training system is the visible signature: vines are grown overhead on parras, pergolas carried on granite posts and wire about two metres up, which lifts the fruit away from damp ground, allows air to circulate and lets the ground beneath be used for other crops, an arrangement developed over centuries in a region of tiny fragmented plots. The wine is high in acidity with citrus and stone fruit and is drunk young with the seafood the coast produces. Around two hundred wineries operate, many very small, several receiving visitors by arrangement.

What you actually see

• The granite pergolas - vines trained overhead on stone posts and wire.
• The tiny plots - a landscape of fragmented smallholdings.
• The September harvest - picking under the pergolas by hand.
• The seafood pairing - the wine drunk with the rias' shellfish.

When to go

September for harvest, which is early here; May to October for touring in the driest months. Cambados holds an Albarino festival in early August. Winter is very wet and many small wineries close to visitors.

Honest expectations

Most wineries are small family operations requiring advance booking, and few have walk-in tasting rooms. A car and a designated driver are needed. Rain is frequent in every season.

Nearby

Cambados and the Salnes valley are the heart; Pontevedra and the rias lie south.