Mendes & Symington Contacto Alvarinho 2024
Mendes & Symington Contacto Alvarinho 2024
$19.99 on 6+ (use code: 6saves2)
Drink Date: 2025 - 2030
The 2024 Contacto Alvarinho is part of a joint venture with the Symington family, but the brand has existed since 2008, and the Symingtons have had 50% of the brand since 2023. The concept here comes from the skin contact, which varies depending on the acidity and the ripeness; in very warm years, they avoid full skin contact because it lowers acidity. Here we're talking 12 hours at 12 degrees Celsius for 70% of the grapes, so it's not at all an "orange" wine. In fact, the color is as pale as the Muros Antigos. The difference here is the soils where the grapes grow—in the Quinta da Torre, the soils are alluvial (still granitic) but with a little more clay (8%) and more resistance to drought. It started quite shy, but the wine is more aromatic and floral; it has more volume and is more concentrated, because of the soils and the skin contact. It comes in at 12.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.3 and seven grams of acidity—a little of those factors is what happens with the alluvial soils, but the higher pH is because there's more potassium for the grapes and the acidity is also higher; but it's more because of the temperature, which in the Quinta da Torre, a valley, is lower at night than in the slopes from Melgaço, where the grapes from Muros Antigos come from. 360,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in January 2025.
I had a fantastic hour and a half with Anselmo Mendes between Porto and his Quinta da Torre in Melgaço, and I learned so much about Vinho Verde, Alvarinho and Loureiro that I couldn't believe it.
In 2023, they harvested at the end of August, but in 2024, they started the Alvarinho 15 days later, from mid-September, which makes a big difference, a slow ripening of the grapes in 2024. The difference was the temperature difference between day and night in September, which provoked a longer cycle, which means more development of aromas and flavors in the grapes. Published: Mar 27, 2025 Reviewed by: Luis Gutiérrez
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.
