albariño

[lsanderson]

Living and Drinking in the Moment
By ERIC ASIMOV

THE middle of August has arrived, and you know what that means. The stores are decked out with sweaters and woolens, food magazines are beginning to offer recipes for hearty stews and, by the way, if you have Christmas travel plans, you had better book now.

Has anybody looked out the window or checked the temperature?

Here at Wines of The Times, that sort of desperate forward thinking stops right here and right now. Let the ants fuss with their preparations for storm windows and winter insulation; we grasshoppers are still in a relaxed summer mood. We continue to thirst for crisp, refreshing white wines like albariño, one of Spain’s finer contributions to warm-weather drinking.

The rocket trajectory of Spain’s transition into a modern wine-producing powerhouse makes it highly susceptible to a focus on the next new thing, in which each pleasant discovery quickly overtakes the last. In the 1980s, albariño was one of the first wines to emerge from modern Spain, which in the current scheme of things makes it positively ancient. More