Winemaker Notes
This nervy, light-bodied red wine features a perfume of pomegranate and white pepper. With a nice volume of ripe red fruits and herbal flavors, this wine has a firm and notable finish.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
It was hard to beat the superb 2016, but the 2017 Gaba do Xil Mencía was also perfumed and open, expressive, with a little more ripeness, with good volume and a little more density. This fermented and matured in stainless steel and was bottled without ever touching any oak to keep the fruit profile. But it's more than fruit; it has the austere texture of the granite soils with an expressive finish.
Rating: 90+
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.
Just to the south of Bierzo, the steeply terraced Valdeorras Spanish wine region is a respected source of both red and white wines. Garnacha Tintorera (Alicante Bouschet) and Mencía are the principal red varieties while Godello and Palomino compose the majority of this region's whites.