Viva Albariño

I've got another Spanish wine for y'all to enjoy, a little pricier than the one I banged on about last time, but even more rewarding and just straight-down-the-fucking-line delicious. And it's a white this time, because Spainish white is vastly underrated as far as I'm concerned, and when it's good, makes the French look like fucking amateurs. Fussy as I am when it comes to reds, I'm way fucking worse when it comes to white, because there is almost nothing on Earth that tastes as bad and wrong as shit white wine. This stuff though, is the fucking bollocks. Burgáns Albariño, from Bodegas Martín Códax in Rias Baixas, Orixe, in Galicia is simply astonishing. Yeah, it's £12 a bottle, but fuck me is it worth every penny, and frankly a damn sight more.

Before I tried this, viognier, viura and gewürztraminer (when I'm in the right mood) were my favourite white grapes by a country mile, but albariño is really a bit fucking special. It doesn't have the floral, perfumey kick of a good viognier, but it terms of sheer unusual fruit it wipes the floor with it, and like viognier, it has that initial slight sweetness (bear in mind I hate sweet whites with a vengeance) that fades to a beautifully dry finish on the tongue, but the two sides of this grape seem to integrate far more seamlessly than with the viognier, where unless it's really good it can be a bit like a grape fight in yr mouth, but the acid and dryness sort of fade in and slowly overwhelm the peachy and banana notes that dominate the intitial flavour explosion (albariño is more acidic than viognier, but takes a little longer to reveal it's charms in that respect) plus it completely lacks the oily mouthfeel that can let viogniers down for me sometimes, probably because of the lack of terpenes, the oils that lend viognier it's floral and piney notes.

It's possibly the single most refreshing wine I've ever tasted, having a very small amount of underlying grapefruity bitterness that adds yet another layer of awesome to it's already complex taste, rendering it far less fucking cloying than a gewürztraminer, a wine I am very fond of, but because of the overpowering lychee notes it bungs out, one I very rarely drink without some serious fucking game or fatty fish to counter it's mouthcoating sugariness (even with a dry one). It's so good I'm having to force myself to not just glug the whole damn bottle in one go, and it's worth the effort, because the flavour lingers in the mouth and nose in a manner I've never quite encountered with a white before. It's genuinely amazing stuff, and I would like to thank the staff of Oddbins in Blackheath for a. recommending it to me in the first place, and b. being really good people who really understand their booze, and enjoy talking about it with likeminded folks*. Seriously, this stuff is as good as white gets, and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

Note to La Spliffe: Do not buy Australian albariño, as due to an astounding fuckup about 10 years ago or so, almost all Australian wines labelled as albariño are actually made from savagnin, which isn't a bad grape by any standards, but it sure as shit ain't albariño. See here for the amusing details. Oh, and I'm about midway into my list of killer Aussie wines at the moment and will have it ready for you in a few days.

*Drunks with a keen sense of aesthetics.