Mendes & Symington Contacto Alvarinho 2025
Mendes & Symington Contacto Alvarinho 2025
$19.99 on 6+ (use code: 6saves2)
Drink Date: 2026 - 2030
The 2025 Contacto Alvarinho is part of a joint venture with the Symington family. This is named after the contact with the skins, which is quite short anyway—and not for all the volume—but seems to add some oomph in lighter vintages. It fermented and matured in stainless still with neutral yeasts and was bottled after three months with the lees. It's pale, young and primary. It comes in at 12.5% alcohol, with a pH of 3.05 and 6.7 grams of acidity and some lightness. 360,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in January 2026.
Serious Vinho Verde, particularly Alvarinho, is a much more complex and layered wine than what most people think of Vinho Verde. Today's wine "Contacto" gets it's name for the time the wine gets "in contact" with the grape skins. While short and not an orange wine at all, it adds textural and flavor dimension most Vinho Verdes all lack and puts this wine at the top of many people's choices for top white wines from Portugal. In fact, if all goes according to plan, wines from the region this wine hails from (Monção & Melgaço) will get their own DOC and no longer have to be associated with Vinho Verde. The quality level is so good on average from here that the lower price association of Vinho Verde is holding back the ability for wines like today's to fetch higher and more deserving prices (your advantage here folks). The Bouca wines below fall into a different sub-region with different grapes, but the commitment to high quality is the same!
"One famous producer of Alvarinho Vinho Verde is Anselmo Mendes, who has been making a range of both Alvarinho and Loureiro wines since 1998, although they have only been available in the U.S. for the past several years."
"The Anselmo Contacto Alvarinho was in a class by itself, beautifully balanced with an impressive and persistent mineral note. Like their fruity, fun counterparts, these dry Vinho Verdes were a pleasure to drink, even more so with food, especially seafood."
"Anselmo Mendes is a star of Vinho Verde for his many successful winemaking experiments. One such foray is this skin-contact Alvarinho (thus the name Contacto)—fermenting wine is allowed some contact with the grape skins, lending texture and depth—a rich and well-balanced white with a powerful mineral persistence."
- Lettie Teague, Wall Street Journal
I used to buy and drink a lot of Contacto, the original version from Anselmo Mendes years ago. 2011-2015 vintages were always around the house in the summer up until I moved to NC where the wine was no longer available. Fast forward 6 years and a new collaboration with the Symington Family has brought this new version to NC. This is a new Contacto from a single vineyard that Anselmo personally picked out that is not available anywhere except here and a few select big markets at the moment, and there it is mostly in restaurants. Fresh, piquant, with excellent energy from the fresh and mineral character of the wine, this is a no brainer for the summer.
Contacto Alvarinho is obtained from the noble Alvarinho grape variety grown exclusively in the sub-region of Monção and Melgaço. The location of this sub-region provides it with a temperate climate, being surrounded by a range of mountains on the Spanish and Portuguese borders, which allow us a unique combination between precipitation, temperature and light required for the perfect maturation of the grapes. For the production of this wine, vineyards were selected near the river with granite soils of sandy loam texture. Located at low altitude, with alluvium and fluvial terraces well present, offering the wine the complexity and minerality typical of the variety.
