Reguengo de Melgaço

Reguengo de Melgaco is a historic property in the village of Paderne in the far north of Portugal, commissioned by Queen Leonor in the sixteenth century. It was bought in the 1990s by its current owners, who planted nine hectares across two sites and released their first vintage in 2001.

The location is the point. Moncao e Melgaco is the northernmost sub-region of Vinho Verde, tucked against the Spanish border where the Minho river divides Portugal from Galicia, and the mountains shelter it from the Atlantic rain that soaks the rest of the Minho. That makes it the one place in the appellation where Alvarinho ripens fully.

The same grape is Albarino a few hundred metres away across the river in Rias Baixas. Here it gives more body and stone fruit and rather less of the saline snap, and the estate is among the references for it.