Winemaker Notes
Descendientes de Jose Palacios Corullon is aged in French oak, all of which was previously used either for past vintages of Corullon or to have briefly aged Petalos.
Blend: 93% Mencía, 4% Jerez (Palomino), 2.5% Alicante Bouschet, 0.5% Gran Negro
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The bottled village red 2022 Corullón was produced with grapes from around 90 different plots and had a short élevage of eight months in barrel. It is 93% Mencía, 4% Jerez (Palomino), 2.5% Alicante Bouschet and 0.5% Gran Negro bottled at 13.5% alcohol. It's floral and aromatic, but compared with the more-austere 2023, it comes through as more generous, riper and a little gentler, with more fruit but with elegance and freshness that nobody expected during the torrid summer and harvest. It keeps the freshness and poise, with fine-grained tannins.
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James Suckling
A difficult vintage has delivered more tannins to the wine, but it is nevertheless fresh and nervy, with grilled grapefruit, white pepper and hibiscus. Structured in terms of the firmness and the quantity of the tannins. It’s very different from the 2021 vintage, which shows nimbleness and agility. Vertical but still quite bright. It needs two more years to come around. Drink from 2026.
Primarily found in the Bierzo, Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras regions of Spain and in the Dão of Portugal (where it is called Jaen), Mencia is an early ripening, low acid grape that can produce wines of great concentration, complexity and ageability. And yet Mencia once suffered from a poor reputation and deemed capable of producing simple and light red wines. Post-phylloxera growers would grow this variety on low, fertile plains, which produced high yields and uncomplicated finished wines. Somm Secret—The recent rediscovery of the ancient, abandoned vines planted on rugged hillsides of deep schist has unveiled the potential of Mencia and added discredit to its old reputation.
One of the few northwestern Spanish regions with a focus on a red variety, Bierzo, part of Castilla y León, is home to the flowery and fruity Mencia grape. Mencia produces balanced and bright red wines full of strawberry, raspberry, pomegranate, baking spice, pepper and black licorice. The well-drained soils of Bierzo are slate and granite.