Vinho verde country, between the Minho and Douro rivers — the most densely peopled countryside in Portugal, where for centuries the vine was trained up trees and granite pergolas so that the ground below could feed the family. Monasteries organised viticulture here from the eleventh century, and the region's light wines were being shipped to England as early as the fourteenth.
The name means "green wine": young, low in alcohol, with a prickle of gas, long the cheap refreshment of the Portuguese table. Its serious enclave lies in the far north, at Monção e Melgaço, where Alvarinho ripens fully and faces Galicia's Rías Baixas — home of the same grape — across the river that gives the province its name.