Winemaker Notes
Intense when held in the glass, with clean, integrated notes and an expression of ripe blackcurrant-type fruit. It offers mineral notes from the terroir, which coexist with aromas from its long aging, subtly enveloping them. Upon swirling, it offers aromas reminiscent of fine woodwork, smoke, and coffee, without abandoning the magnificent grape sensation that so notably characterizes this wine.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Inky ruby to the eye, this wine has a nose of blueberry pie, rosemary and dark chocolate. It offers bright red and black berry flavors on entry before athletic tannins and flavors of chocolate-covered espresso bean, black olive, saddle leather and eucalyptus set in and then taper off to a savory finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
From a parcel called La Cabarca of pre-phylloxera 100-year-old vines in the San Clemente Valley, around which the winery sits, the 2018 Mencia El Origen is the producer’s most elegant and age-worthy wine, needing time to unravel even after seven years. It spent 26 months in barrel to soften the tannins and another two years minimum in bottle. Leather, soy, and balsamic notes dominate along a savory thread of full-bodied intensity that presents as sweet, rich, and supple, with dusty touches of coconut, white pepper, and baked plum.
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.