Winemaker Notes
This 100% Mencia has a strong personality with a complex, elegant yet concentrated nose. The wine displays ripe red fruit notes enveloped in aromas of mineral and wildflowers along with spicy notes from the wood. It is smooth and elegant on the palate and has sweet and pleasant tannins. Its persistent and lingering finish in the mouth stands out.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Dark ruby color; lush, rich, and fresh with some puckery tannins; juicy with bright plum and blackberry; creamy with good balance.
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Wine Enthusiast
Potent earthy cherry and animal aromas are neither too pushy nor overbearing. This is quite full and concentrated, with a ripe-fruit mix of black plum, blackberry and chocolate flavors. Chocolaty oak is even more out front on a deep finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Mencia fermented in stainless steel and matured in new and used 400-liter French oak barrels for one year. There are plenty of lactic aromas, akin to fruit of the forest yogurt, in a nice commercial profile. The palate shows the house style, polished and sleek with moderate acidity. 80,000 bottles produced.
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Wine Spectator
Cocoa and cola notes frame tart cherry and leafy flavors in this focused red. Smoky and mineral notes add interest. Light tannins and firm acidity keep this focused. Harmonious. Drink now through 2020.
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.