Join Us & Get Wine 101 Course 75% Off

Featured Grape: Verdejo

If you’re a fan of crisp, fresh, aromatic, fruity white wines with clean herbaceous notes, you’ll want to reach for a Verdejo. The grape is predominantly grown in Rueda, Spain, where careful harvesting and vinification techniques are instrumental to maintaining its crisp, lively style, as the grape is prone to easy oxidation. Very similar in style and flavor to Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris, Verdejo makes both a refreshing aperitif and good food pairing wine.

Verdejo Taste Profile illustration by Wine Folly

Verdejo wines can be made into two distinctive styles. Most often, you’ll encounter Verdejo as a ready to drink, light and crisp wine with herbaceous notes and fresh fruit flavors. However, when Verdejo sees more oxygen during fermentation (usually during oak-aging), the resultant wine becomes much more full-bodied and somewhat nutty, with additional notes of almond and honey.

verdejo-bottles-illustration
Low-shouldered bottles typically indicate a wine with some form of oxidative winemaking, where as high-shouldered bottles indicate a leaner, fruity style.

Try a fresh, lively Rueda Verdejo

When labeled Rueda Verdejo, the wine will contain at least 85% Verdejo (though most often are 100%), as opposed to Rueda white blends, which must have at least 50% Verdejo with the remaining usually Sauvignon Blanc and/or Viura (aka Macabeo).


atf-wine-tasting-placemats

Create Your Own Comparative Wine Tasting

We created a set of tasting mats that will help you assess wine and create your own wine tastings. The set includes mats for up to 80 wines, instructions on how to create a tasting, as well as a wine aroma wheel.

Tasting Mats


Join Our Newsletter

Jumpstart your wine education and subscribe to the Wine Folly newsletter right now. Always awesome. Always free.

sign up free