Cheers! Today is World Verdejo Day
Verdejo, the Spanish white wine with its exuberant summery character, makes everyone happy. So it’s a favorite aperitif wine here in the editorial office. And today we’re raising our glasses a little more enthusiastically during the Friday afternoon drinks with our Verdejo, because hooray: it’s World Verdejo Day!
Berdeggo!
Verdejo – pronounced berdeggo – is a perfect wine for warm days and a true crowd-pleaser. It’s no wonder it’s a favorite among sommeliers, because you can hardly go wrong with Verdejo. On World Verdejo Day, the second Friday in June, we pay tribute to the Spanish wine grape. The verdejo grape, after which the wine is named, is typical of the Spanish wine region of Rueda, but by now it is also widely planted outside Spain.
Truly Spanish
What I personally love about Verdejo, apart from the fact that it’s a white wine I’m always in the mood for, is that it’s made from a genuinely Spanish grape. Many historic wine regions give plenty of room to international success stories, think of ‘slutty’ chardonnay, while it’s so much more fun when you can drink wine made from indigenous grape varieties in their place of origin. You can drink chardonnay anywhere, but when I’m in Spain, I much prefer drinking a Verdejo from Rueda. It also goes fantastically with Spanish cuisine, because what grows together, goes together.
Green
Verdejo owes its name to its ever-green color, by the way. Even when the grape is fully ripe, it retains its green color. This is in contrast to many grapes that turn yellow when fully ripe. No matter how ripe it gets, Verdejo remains a crisp white wine with delicious, sometimes even tropical, fruit aromas. And in the best cases, a mineral undertone. Is it almost time for drinks?
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