Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Sweet cherry fruit, enormal herbal-spicy aromas and intense minerality. Great concentration and brilliance that carries through the long electric finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Concentrated black fruit aromas come with accents of lemony oak, olive and dried spice. A flush, tight, extracted palate features drying tannins along with savory flavors of black fruits and black olive. A muscular, meaty finish with lasting dark-berry flavors ranks as full, dense and delicious.
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.