2020 Pazo Cilleiro Albarino Rias Baixas 750 ml

If you love white wine, you owe it to yourself to try Albariño. If you’ve had Albariño but never tried it from Salnés—a tiny zone that’s the beating heart of Rías Baixas—you’ve never had it at its brilliantly electric potential. Pazo Cilleiro is one of Salnés’ standout producers, and their 91-point 2020 Albariño is not only fantastic, but also a spectacular value in Spanish wine.

Located right next to the Atlantic in northwestern Spain, the Salnés terroir is perfect for creating compulsively drinkable bottles. Cool breezes off the ocean keep the wine’s acidity bright and fresh, evoking a saline minerality that demands sip after sip, which inspired Wine Enthusiast to call Albariño from the area “some of the world’s most elegant white wines.”

Pazo Cilleiro’s 2020 is a perfect stand-in for pricey bottles of Sancerre, Grüner Veltliner, or Chablis—at an outstanding price: just $16.99. At that number, we’ve been drinking it like it’s going out of style, pairing it with everything from shrimp cocktail, to niçoise salad, to lemony grilled chicken.

Pour a glass and you’re immediately struck by how pretty the nose is. The soft orange zest is inviting, especially as it blends with aromas of jasmine, sea spray, and crushed rock. With one sip, the wine snaps you to attention, showing luscious fruit balanced against a buzzy, electric vibrancy. It finishes clean and fresh—and the only thing you’ll want to do is pour another glass.

Pazo Cilleiro’s version stands out in a region known for value because of their commitment to quality, which starts with farming. The best way to train Albariño vines in this cool, windy area is on traditional pergolas—a labor-intensive technique that makes it hard to use any mechanization in the vineyard.

As a result, the practice is rare among the region’s newer sites, so Cilleiro works with a mind-boggling network of 250 different family growers, many of whom farm less than an acre. It’s a difficult process, but the result is grapevines that are tended lovingly, using old-fashioned techniques that are nearly impossible to find at scale.

To transform that vineyard potential into a fully-realized vision, Cilleiro makes multiple picking passes and sorts the grapes both in the vineyard and in the winery, all to ensure that only the best Albariño makes it into their wines. After a gentle pressing and cool fermentation in stainless steel—perfect for preserving the purity and delicacy of the grapes’ aromas—the wine rests on its fine lees to add a touch of texture before bottling.

Now that we’ve got our bottles in hand, it’s easy to see that all their work was worth it. Every glass poured shows off Pazo Cilleiro’s attention to detail, and every bottle drained proves the wine’s deliciousness.