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WINES OF THE TIMES
The Iberian Nights: A Light, Breezy Tale
By ERIC ASIMOV
 ETWEEN
the blooms of mid-April and the usual summer sweatbox, a narrow window
opens for outdoor dining in New York. Whether in restaurant, yard or
park, this is the opportunity to soak in the seaside breezes, to bathe
in the whitewashed light, to fantasize about an indolent life where
decisions come no harder than whether to turn over or sit up.
These moments call for the sort of crisp, lively white wines that give
a bracing lift to shellfish and light seafood dishes or at least pave
the way for the reds to follow. No shortage of these types of wines,
luckily. Sancerre is a natural, its chilled bottle sweating in the
sunlight, and so is its pungent sauvignon blanc cousin from New
Zealand. There is tocai Friuliano and roussanne and muscadet, of
course, and any number of wines from all over Italy. Not least among
this group is the Iberian wine known as albariño in the tiny Rías
Baixas region of Galicia in northwestern Spain and as alvarinho across
the border to the south in northwestern Portugal.
"They're Iberia's answer to muscadet," said Florence Fabricant, my
colleague on the Dining section's wine panel, which tasted 24
albariños, as I will arbitrarily call the collection.
I knew exactly what she meant in her comparison. But while good
muscadet has a deliciously yeasty quality, it is neutral-smelling.
Albariño, by contrast, can be explosively aromatic, full of easily
detectable floral, mineral and citrus scents. It can be both creamy in
texture and highly acidic, which gives it the vibrant freshness to
match, say, ceviche, or grilled octopus. Yet that acidity can also make
albariño seem a little harsh as an aperitif. As Amanda Hesser, my other
colleague on the panel, put it, "they're built for food."
We were joined by a guest, Tarcisio Costa, the wine director at Alfama,
a Portuguese restaurant in Greenwich Village. Mr. Costa was
disappointed that 19 of our bottles were Spanish, but we are bound by
what we find in retail shops, and the Portuguese alvarinhos are much
rarer. Nonetheless, our top wine was Portuguese, the 2002 Portal do
Fidalgo, an exceptionally pure, light-bodied and delicious wine. At $10
a bottle, it was also our best value. To me, the Portal do Fidalgo was
a consummate outdoor wine, which refreshes and whets the appetite.
One other Portuguese bottle made our list, the 2001 Quinta do Dorado at
No. 9, and we liked it despite what it represented. Most albariños, in
both Spain and Portugal, are fermented and stored briefly in stainless
steel tanks, which preserve the freshness and fruitiness of the grape.
A small percentage of winemakers, though, have experimented with aging
albariño in small barrels made of new oak, a procedure evident in a
glass of Quinta do Dorado. There, the winemakers have done it
skillfully. The oak treatment adds a sort of creamy cushion to the wine
that is not disagreeable, yet it is a softer, less lively wine, perhaps
more suited for indoors or for winter.
Paradoxically, the wine is labeled vinho verde, or green wine,
referring not to color but to youth. Vinhos verdes are meant to be
zesty and inconsequential, not like the Quinta do Dorado, which at $20
was the most expensive of our top 10.
Apart from this one oak-scented bottle, I divided the wines into two
categories. Some, like the Portal do Fidalgo, were as light and fine as
summer sundresses. Others were more robust, like our No. 2 bottle, the
2002 Laxas from Rías Baixas (pronounced REE-ez BUY-shez), and
especially our No. 3, the 2002 Casal Caeiro. These were more
substantial wines, filled with lush aromas, yet they retained their
lively acidity and never tasted hot or alcoholic. Most of these wines
were around 12 percent alcohol, quite a bit lighter than, say,
California chardonnays, which these days are rarely less than 14
percent.
One of the more slender albariños, the 2002 Granbazan, did strike me as
a good aperitif, perhaps because it did not seem quite so bone dry as
some of the others, which helped to balance the acidity.
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