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
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James Suckling
Lots of dark berries with spice and rust character. It’s medium-bodied with dark fruit and pepper.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
After devastating frost in 2017 and killer mildew in 2018, the vintage for the red 2019 Gaba do Xil Tinto from Valdeorras was healthier and the crop was good, save for some hail in specific vineyards during the summer. It was a ripe, healthy and balanced year. This is a young, unoaked Mencía with 13.44% alcohol that fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel, where it matured for 12 months before bottling. It's intensely aromatic and expressive, varietal and with the wild rusticity of the zone. The palate is medium-bodied, with very fine tannins and a soft mouthfeel.
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.