Verdejo

Synonyms: verdeja, verdejo/a blanco/a (Oviedo, Segovia, Valladolid, Zamora), Albillo de Nava (Rueda).

Early to medium flowering and ripening, this variety is not very vigorous and resists well to cold, extreme heat and drought. It has a strong genetic kinship with the Godello grape.

Verdejo is most at home in the Rueda area, although it is also widely planted in the rest of Castilla y León, in Castilla La Mancha and even in Extremadura.

The low yields of the vineyard contribute to reinforce the quality of its wines. Verdejo is used to produce single-varietal wines of all qualities. One of its virtues is that, due to its marked aroma, it is capable of producing expressive and varietal wines in high-volume industrial processes, provided that neutral yeasts are used in fermentation. The profile of the average wine from Verdejo is a light straw colored wine with greenish reflections, in the nose it often expresses lemon, white fruit such as pear or French melon, or tropical fruit. Very distinctive are its herbal notes of green grass, laurel or hay that are sometimes more aniseed-like, such as fennel. Some tasters consider it to have a bitter almond note reminiscent of some Italian white wines. In the mouth it has a medium body, good acidity and a slightly bitter finish. Verdejo in Rueda is also used to make sparkling wines made by the traditional method. In addition, some wineries continue to make the historic fortified wines, aged in oak barrels under the veil in flor, slightly fortified with alcohol: the pale and golden ones, analogous to the finos and olorosos of Jerez.