Winemaker Notes
Intense ruby color, with ripe blackberry and blueberry aromas. Beautifully balanced smoky cedar oak notes. These red fruit notes transpire onto a silky smooth, juicy, herbal rounded palate.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Reduced aromas of black fruits and black olive set up a chewy palate that's weighty but smooth in texture. Black plum and blackberry flavors are boosted by welcome acidity, while on the finish this is full in weight but also amply lifted.
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Wine & Spirits
Husband-and-wife team Víctor Robla and Angeles Varela focus on the local mencía and godello. This is a brooding and fruit-forward expression of mencía, with flavors of plum, lingonberry, raspberry and dried strawberry. It finishes with broad and dusty tannins, to serve with a flank steak.
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.