Thanks for those tips Greg.
I doubt that I am shedding any new light here, but…
I tasted the Corullon back in 2006, and enjoyed the story a little more than the wine. The image of rocky 60° slopes farmed with mules captivated me. As I understand it, the Petalos bottling is derived from lower, flatter vineyard sites.
I have not had a “Menthia” with age.
Mencia, Mencia,
Where art thou, Mencia?
You’re frankly not cabernet
but are you Castillian to the core?
An explosion of flavors,
a musk filled scent, planted
upon Rome’s bastard colonial slopes.
Second Greg T. on the Abad, and it seems to be built for aging. Older vintages are released regularly in my market. Had the '01 Abad Dom Bueno Crianza a couple of years ago ago, and it was quite lovely. Amazing QPR. Haven’t tried the premium bottling (Carracedo).
The 01 Crianza is still nice. The Carracedo is a curious wine - I have a lot of the more recent vintages but it’s a little different. Not sure what I think of it yet. BTW, the wines of Raul Perez range from OK to really extraordinary. A few months ago I found a store in Reno of all places that had a bunch of his wines so I bought a case.
There’s really interesting stuff going on in the various regions that grow Mencia and the better wines are different in all of them - Ribeira Sacra, Valdeorras, and of course Bierzo, and a place few people ever heard of called Liébana. The grape is a real change from some of the riper types of wines found in much of Spain. I like many of those but since there’s so little history with Mencia, I think it has huge potential.
I own a couple and plan to open one this year: 1948 Palacio de Arganza Bierzo Gran Reserva. An impulse purchase.
Cheers,
Warren
+1. The handful I’ve drunk have run a wider gamut than my experience with nearly any other variety, from Beaujolais’s delicate Spanish cousin to the even more overripe, over oaked demon offspring of overdone Napa cab and the highest octane southern Rhone.
Wow. Didn’t even realize you could find old mencia like that!
I was at a Mencia tasting earlier this year where we tasted some of the earliest vintages of Paixar and Corullon (I don’t have my notes and can’t remember the particulars right now). I thought both wines showed very well at at approximately 15 years of age.
Well Gabe, we tasted all the vintages of Paixar at my house and I came of that totally confused. Based on the tastings I did on release, and especially based on the wine makers, I bought a lot of Paixar. Now I’m not so sure. But who knows? That wine, the Corullon wines, and the Perez wines, in addition to the Abad Dom are kind of the best I know of, so I’m really interested in what happens to them.
Frankly, whether they’re this or that isn’t as important to me as is the fact that they’re interesting. We can always find another Pinot Noir or Cab that we can argue about, but Mencia, and wines like the Negoska that I’m drinking at the moment, are just so much more interesting. For me anyway.
Greg - What was the name of the shop in Reno?
I opened the Petalos the other night. At first it was a bit dull and heavy, then really opened up and had all those lovely aromatics I like, combined with fresh palate. The next day it had died though.
Hi Folks,
I am just starting to dip a toe or two in the deep waters of Ribeira Sacra, but it seems to me that the reds that are not over-oaked or overripe out of the blocks have the potential to age easily for twenty-five to thirty years. On my first visit to the region last October, we tasted back to 1995 at one estate and the wine was still fresh as a daisy, had developed lovely complexity and was still plenty vibrant and showing no signs of slowing down over the next decade or more. The '95 was from Viña Cazoga in Amandi, and the 2002 and 2001 that preceded the '95 were both just reaching their peaks and easily had another fifteen to twenty years ahead of them. Amandi has traditionally been considered the finest sub-region on the Sil River (all the way back to Roman times), but I do not see any reason that the top vineyards on the Mino River cannot produce comparably ageworthy wines. As someone alluded to above, the big issue is the winemaker’s stylistic predilection, as there are producers here trying to make big, ripe and oaky wines, which does not strike me as the sweet spot for this region or varietal. But, folks like Algueira, Toalde, Sabatelius and Décima all strike me as estates that are making nicely balanced wines from Mencia that are going to age very gracefully and will probably be starting to reach their apogees around age ten and cruise along far longer. As I said, I am still a neophyte with Ribeira Sacra aging curves, but hope to have an opportunity to remedy this in the coming years. But, I think the more classically styled producers here are making wines that are going to age very well, and my gut instinct is that as they get more traction in the market and start to make a bit more money to reinvest in their properties (which are really quite bare-boned in most cases), their wines will only increase in ageworthiness. The small pile of bottles I have in my cellar are staying put until their tenth birthdays, and then we will see how they are starting to come along.
All the Best,
John
Lovely post John.
I too have been fascinated recently with the winemakers in the Ribeira Sacra region. Got turned on to the region by Jose Pastor and met with him and Pedro Guimaro (Adegas Guimaro wines) a number of months ago and tasted through Pedro’s offerings as well as some of his super special 0.45ha whole cluster 70 yr old Mencia offering. Having no experience with his wines, this one stood out incredibly even without being told what it was. They pulled out a 6 or 7 year old bottle of the same cuvee and we tasted them side by side and there was a lovely depth and maturity to the one with some age on it. I did not ask about further aging, but for sure short term aging won’t hurt a well made mencia.
I need to find some Merenzao (Trousseau) to satisfy the Jura nerd in me for comparison 
John - with all due respect, I’ve been drinking these for a while and I think it’s pretty early to talk about how they’re going to age. You might want to be trying them for a few years before making any pronouncements. If your first visit was last October, you haven’t had them on release and you haven’t had them over the years as you’ve watched them evolve. One would not go to Bordeaux or Burgundy and make an assessment of the region based on the 2014s and whatever wines he was shown from fifteen to twenty years ago. That’s like going to Rioja for the first time and announcing that a particular wine was 100 points with at least 100 years ahead of it, and never tasting it again and consequently having no clue that the wine craps out about year five. Not that anyone ever did that.
Nor is it about reflexively talking about “over-oaked” or the like. It’s because the Mencia wines are what they are. And having been there more than once over the years and having been tasting them for longer than a few months, I can say that most of them suck. What they were doing in Roman times had nothing to do with what they’re doing today. We don’t know what the grapes were and the characteristics that were prized in those days are not those that are prized today. We’re not enjoying liquamen, we’re not watching gladiator death bouts, and we’re not adding pitch and seawater to our wine.
As I said however, I find them to be among the more interesting wines from Spain these days. I’m hoping that they’ll be age-worthy. But making “fine wine” with Mencia is a fairly new phenomenon so we all have a lot to learn.
Matt - it was Whispering Vine. It was a couple weeks before they moved most of their inventory into a bigger place next to Johnny’s on 4th Street.
I opened the Petalos the other night. At first it was a bit dull and heavy, then really opened up and had all those lovely aromatics I like from Mencia, combined with a fresh palate. The next day it had died a bit though.
So to convince me to age these wines even for 6 or 7 years rather then 2 or 3, I’d want to know what I’m going to get and be sure that I’ll prefer it to the wines that are only 3 years old.
As an aside, I’d be more likely to take an oaked version and lay it down than an unoaked one. Barrel ageing adds longevity to pretty much all other grape varieties. Why not Mencia?
Someone just gave me a bottle from Triton. Anyone have any experience?
We drank a 1948 Palacio de Arganza Bierzo Gran Reserva last night. Typical tough, moldy cork of an old wine, removed successfully but piecemeal with a Durand. I decanted for sediment (minimal) and poured. Light amber, with surprisingly delicate sweet nose; some fruit there but more leather, earth and butterscotch. Light bodied but beautiful palate, just the right acidic edge; initially it seemed like all the tannins were gone, but swirling in the mouth dried my teeth just a little. This was really spectacular. One of those old souls whose energy, balance, dry palate and sweet nose kept it a very spry 67 year old.
If this is typical of an old mencia, I’d have to believe they’re as bullet proof and durable as old Riojas.
In the glass
Thanks for the report, Warren - I was hoping you would report back. You wouldn’t happen to know the approximate number of producers of Bierzo back then?