Winemaker Notes
Soft, supple and silky on the palate, Telmo’s Gaba do Xil Mencia is highly fragrant and floral, with dried herbs and violets, as well as a trademark Mencia smoky meatiness.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The corresponding red 2014 Gaba do Xil Mencía also contains a small proportion of other grapes that are co-planted in the old vineyards. They use both their own grapes and grapes purchased from traditional growers. It also fermented in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and was bottled unoaked. Mencía in stainless steel tends to produce some reductive wines that need some air. 2014 is a vintage that achieved better ripeness and good balance, and the wine shows a profile of wild berries and a leafy touch, with something earthy and a note of tangerine peel providing freshness and perfume. The palate also has some earthy, slightly rustic/dusty tannins, a profile that fits very much with the savage character of the place. This is one of the best quality to price reds from Valdeorras, and a wine produced in decent quantities.
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.