A pair of Valdemor wines: Valdemor Albariño 2004 with a bright orange, mango, and apricot nose with hints of wet cinnamon and wet nutmeg, as well as baked green tart apples; this is full and fun, with apricot, mango, and red apple, and showing some length.

And Valdemor Albariño Barrica 2002, which showed plenty of barrel fermentation smells, but they tended only to enhance the apricot, mango, and apple notes with cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg. The flavors were lemony, with red apple, mango and orange notes growing under black pepper, cinnamon and clove hints. Since it had some barrel time, it had good length, and was friendly and fun, with crisp fruit at the end. But at the end of the day, I remain a bit ambivalent. I think it ought to be treated as a complex aromatic white wine, like a Riesling, and not like the Chardonnay most would assume it resembles.