CVNE Maruxa Mencía, Valdeorras, Spain 2021 (£12.99 or £10.99 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, Majestic; £11.99, Waitrose) When it comes to red wine, the Spanish have a longstanding and justified reputation for doing three things very well: they can do powerful, they can do oaky, and they can do both at sometimes astonishing value. Over the past couple of decades, and especially during the past 10 years, they’ve added several other strings to their tinto bow, with lighter red wines that lean more towards freshness and brightness. The most significant grape variety in this graceful new Spanish wave is undoubtedly mencía, which is for the most part grown in the country’s far northwest: in Bierzo in León and in a handful of locations over the border in Galicia. While mencía can be made in a more forceful, richer style, the majority sit in the part of the spectrum that runs from juicy, vividly fruited middleweights to slender, perfumed pinot noir-alikes. Maruxa, made in Valdeorras, Galicia, by the excellent Rioja producer CVNE, is a good place to start a mencía exploration: a beaujolais-esque youthful splash of red-black berry juiciness.
Adegas Guimaro Tinto Jovén, Ribeira Sacra, Spain 2021 (from £15.25, Joseph Barnes Wines; vinissiums.co.uk) One of the producers who did most to change perceptions of mencía around the turn of the century was Álvaro Palacios. A scion of the Rioja winemaking family of Bodega Palacios Remondos, Palacios made his name as one of the handful of intrepid producers who revived the fortunes of another forgotten winemaking region on the other side of the Iberian peninsula, Priorat in Catalonia. Palacios teamed up with his nephew Ricardo Pérez to make serious mencía under the Descendientes de J Palacios banner, and their Petalos 2021 (£21.50, nywines.co.uk) is still beguiling, there’s a touch of bordeaux or Loire cabernet franc about its combination of graphite and cherry and polished tannins. At the lighter end of the mencía spectrum, I was impressed, at a recent tasting of 60 mencías put on by specialist wine magazine Decanter, by Bierzo’s delightfully fragrant and excellent value Adegas Galegas Salterio Mencía 2021 (£10.95, corneyandbarrow.com) and by the violet-edged, satiny-plush cherry and mineral freshness of Guimaro’s version from Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra region.
Baldovar 923 Cerro Negro, Valencia, Spain 2020 (£28, wine freedom.co.uk) With vines grown in terraces on dizzyingly plunging slopes along the banks of the Miño and Sil rivers, Ribeira Sacra is a strikingly beautiful region, and at the Decanter tasting it accounted for many of my favourite mencía bottlings. Although generally representing the light-and-expressive genre, there is plenty of stylistic variety, with a wild edge to the racy fresh fruit reminding me of lighter French syrahs in the case of Adegas Terrae Barbadelo 2021 (the equally juicy 2020 vintage is at theatreofwine.com for £12.70). Also in Galicia, another peripatetic Spanish star winemaker, Telmo Rodriguez, brings a pinot noir-like mix of orange citrus and classic mencía beetroot-like earthiness to his perfectly poised Gabo do Xil Tinto 2020 (£17.50, nywines.co.uk) from his project in Valdeorras. And it seems that mencía (which also goes by the name of jaen in Portugal) can travel, too: one of my current favourite examples of a variety I think of as quintessentially Atlantic is Cerro Negro from Valencia’s Baldovar 923, which brings a distinctly Mediterranean cast of flavours (wild mint and basil) to its tender red fruit.
Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
