Portuguese Vinho Verde wine guide 2025

❚ This page contains some affiliate links and we may receive a small commission for purchases made, but this comes at no extra cost to you and does not influence our editorial choices.

A selection of four bottles of Vinho Verde wine

Read on for our favourite tried and tested vinho verde wines, and everything you need to know about this unique drink.

Looking for Portuguese wine to buy? Want to know more about unfamiliar wine-making techniques? Read our expert guide, then check out our guides to the best Portuguese red wine to buy and best Douro Valley wines to buy.

Discover why all wine benefits from chilling with our guide to chilling wine. Now discover 10 things we love about the food from the Algarve and our favourite foodie trips in Portugal.

Jump to:

Best vinho verde wines at a glance
Best vinho verde wines to try 2025
What kind of wine is vinho verde?

Best vinho verde wines at a glance

Best classic vinho verde: LB7 Vinho Verde, £8.50
Best vinho verde for summer: Azvedo Vinho Verde, £10
Best with spicy food: Casal de Ventozela Arinto 2024, £9.50
Best rosé vinho verde: M&S Abertura Vinho Verde rosé, £8
Best luxury vinho verde: Quinta da Raza Lagares, £24.50

Best vinho verde wines to try 2025

LB7 Vinho Verde

Available from Majestic (£8.50)

Best classic vinho verde

Classic, spritzy vinho verde, naturally low in alcohol at just 10% and with a sherbet-like, citric freshness that makes it really thirst-quenching. Serve well chilled as a sunny aperitif or with simple seafood dishes.

Available from:
Majestic (£8.50)

Quinta de Azevedo Vinho Verde

Available from Waitrose (£10)

Best vinho verde for summer

A more serious style of VV, with no carbonation and more body and roundness than with the classic wines. Green-apple crispness with hints of mangoes, jasmine and lime zest, it really suits summery salads and grilled fish.

Available from:
Waitrose (£10)

Casal de Ventozela Arinto 2024

Available from Majestic (£9.50)

Best with spicy food

Crunchy green apples and a thread of stony minerality are the characteristics of the arinto grape, grown throughout Portugal and known as pedernã in the Vinho Verde region. A few months’ ageing on its lees (the dead yeast cells left after fermentation is complete) adds a pleasing creamy texture to this and, while it’s made slightly off-dry, it has a bracing saline finish. Really good with slightly spicy food – piri-piri prawns would be an ace match.

Available from:
Majestic (£9.50)

M&S Abertura Vinho Verde rosé

Available from Ocado (£8)

Best rosé vinho verde

Vinho Verde rosé was relatively rare but is becoming more common as the world’s thirst for pink wine continues to grow. Touriga nacional and espadeiro grapes are used in this easy-to-like wine with notes of peaches and juicy cherries, and just a little jolly lime-scented spritz. As delicious as it is versatile it makes a great standby to see you through the sunny months.

Available from:
Ocado (£8)

Quinta da Raza Lagares

Available from Beckford Bottle Shop (£24.50)

Best luxury vinho verde

Quinta de Raza was established in 1791 in a mountainous region in the south of Vinho Verde and is still run by the same family. This is made from old vines of vinhão grapes, foot trodden and fermented with native yeasts in traditional stone lagares, yet is very modern in its appeal – earthy but with refreshing acidity and loads of crunchy berry fruit. It’s best slightly chilled and served with anything hot from a grill.

Available from:
Beckford Bottle Shop (£24.50)

What kind of wine is vinho verde?

Vinho Verde is unique in the wine world in that it’s the only region not named after a place or geographical feature. It means ‘green wine’ and most think this refers to the young white wines for which it is best known, although it must be said that the area itself is indeed very green and lush – on the north-west corner of Portugal, stretching south from the Galician border in Spain to Porto and the Douro River, its long Atlantic coast to the west brings chilly winds and high rainfall – these are very much cool climate wines.

Classic vinho verdes are fresh and zesty, a gentle 9.5% or so ABV and bottled when still slightly sweet, often with a little carbon dioxide added to give it a little spritz. Historically, most growers sold their grapes to cooperatives or other makers to produce these generic wines but an increasing number are making their own, more serious, estate bottlings that better reflect the diversity of their terroirs.

Portugal is famous for its field-blend wines, where different grape varieties are grown on the same plot and vinified together, but there is now a trend to make single-varietal wines here, nearly always from indigenous grapes. Loureiro, arinto and alvarinho (the same as Spanish albariño) are the main white grapes, while the most widely planted red is vinhāo (also known as sezão), used for wines sold to the Brits as an alternative to burgundy as far back as the 14th century.

One of the few varieties that has red flesh as well as skin, vinhão has an incredibly intense, inky purple colour and was traditionally served in white ceramic bowls. Until recently rather shunned by discerning drinkers, it’s now enjoying a welcome revival. Vinho verde, like other Portuguese regions, is producing really exciting, well priced wines these days and, whether you pick white, red or rosé, their distinctive bright acidity and lip-smacking freshness make for great springtime drinking.