Chief town of the Monterrei district (Ourense), in the Támega valley near the Portuguese border. Its name comes from the Latin personal name Verinus ((villa) Verini); it grew at the foot of the medieval fortress of Monterrei and developed above all in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Roman period (sculpture some 2,000 years old, early imperial villa); medieval vineyards linked to monasteries and the county of MonterreiThe Dionysus of A Muradella, the god of wine in a Roman villa at Mourazos
In the parish of Mourazos, in Verín, stood a Roman villa whose owner, a great landowner who administered these lands for Rome, adorned his courtyard with a sculpture in Parian marble brought from the eastern Mediterranean: Dionysus, god of wine, drunk and leaning on Ampelos, the young satyr who, according to the myth, ended up turned into a vine. The group was found on the A Muradella estate and is now kept in the Archaeological Museum of Ourense. The Regulatory Council regards it as the first cultural allusion to wine in Galicia and the symbolic beginning of the vineyards of the Támega valley. Centuries later, the religious orders and the county of Monterrei, whose castle watches over Verín, spread the vine through the valley; it was also from Verín that the count who became viceroy in America set out in the 16th century.
Alive today: Verín is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO Monterrei (approved in 1994), and every August it fills its tree-lined promenade and squares with the Feira do Viño de Monterrei, which reached its 19th edition in August 2026. At the foot of the castle work bodegas such as Gargalo, owned by Roberto Verino, and Quinta da Muradella, which takes its name from the site of the Roman find.