Winemaker Notes
Intense ruby color, with ripe blackberry and blueberry aromas and beautifully balanced smokey cedar oak notes. These red fruit notes transpire onto a silky smooth, mouth wateringly juicy, herbal rounded palate leaving a persistent ending taste.
Ideal when paired with red meats and cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This plush red delivers a deep well of black cherry and currant flavors, with licorice and cocoa notes that give way to a floral finish. Well-integrated tannins and lively acidity keep this focused.
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.