Those wines had an invigorating tanginess and discernable minerality that resonated with us all, and the flavors had staying power.

Once in Spain I drank a lovely 30-year-old example of a single-vineyard albariño, so I can attest to the wine’s potential. Here at home, I’ve had beautiful older examples of my favorite bottling, the Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas — Cepas Vellas is Galician for old vines — which is said to come from a vineyard 200 years old. The 2011 Cepas Vellas in our tasting was our No. 3 bottle, though it divided our panel. Gil and Florence did not care for it, but Barbara and I loved it, and I think of it as a wonderful, age-worthy example of the complexity that albariño can achieve. The ordinary Do Ferreiro, which wasn’t in our tasting, is also a pretty good bottle, by the way.

Our overall favorites, the 2011 Leirana from Forja del Salnés and the 2011 Etiqueta Ámbar from Granbazán, were also clearly a step above the others. The Leirana had deep, true mineral and fruit flavors that resounded long after the sip was gone, while the Ámbar was aromatic, steely and complex. It was also our best value at $22.

The No. 4 wine, the 2011 Igrexario de Saiar from Benito Santos, fresh, enticing and just $17, not only gave the Ámbar a run as best value, it most definitely showed an effort to display a distinctive terroir. In fact, Benito Santos, now run by an American, Todd Blomberg, bottles three single-vineyard albariños. The Igrexario di Saiar is the entry-level of the three, and possibly the least distinctive, but delicious nonetheless. I would urge seeking out the other wines as well.

All of the bottles in our tasting were 100 percent albariño except for the No. 8, 2011 O Rosal from Terras Gauda. This tangy, straightforward wine, made from grapes from the O Rosal Valley, is 70 percent albariño, with a combination of two obscure local grapes, loureira and caíño blanco, making up the rest. The rules in Rías Baixas require a wine to be all albariño to use the term on the label, so this one goes without.

While we enjoyed all of the wines on our list, Gil was correct in suggesting that many albariño producers could aim higher. The top producers show the grape’s potential, and the land itself, with sandy, granitic soils, sometimes permits growers to plant vines on their own roots because phylloxera, the ravenous root-eating aphid that devastated European vineyards a century ago, does not thrive in sandy soils. It’s one of a few, scattered sites around the world, including Chile, eastern Washington and Colares, a small region northwest of Lisbon on the Atlantic coast, where vines of European origin do not have to be grafted onto American rootstocks, which resist phylloxera.

What does it mean not to have to graft vines? That’s hard to say, although it certainly appeals to the romantic who wants to imagine the relationship of grape to earth unmediated by potential interruptions like grafts. This ability to express the characteristics of a distinctive site is a significant part of what makes wine great. Most albariños don’t show this quality, and settle for pleasant thirst quenching. But the top wines show enough potential for me, at least, to wish for more.