Bierzo is a great wine area that I’ve written about several times.  It is home to the very high quality red grape Mencía as well as the excellent white grape Godello.  Mencía has become quite trendy and it’s harder to find good value these days.  Also I’ve noticed an interesting trend in my wine-tasting groups…Mencía seems to have a love/hate effect on them.  A minority loves it and the majority hates it!  I think this has something to do with the grapes strong personality.  It is often intensely mineral and structured, with a lot of acidity and tannin.  There is also a wonderful, aromatic, floral, red fruit side to the wines, but sometimes that can be a bit lost in the intensity of the structure.  Also Bierzos frequently come in 2 styles than do not make fans.  The first is a joven or “young”  wine with no or very little oak, with exuberant young fruit…at its best this style can showcase the Mencía fruit, but is at its worst it has too much of that candy-like carbonic maceration fruit…aromas of banana and sweets.  The second style is the other extreme….over-oaked, a style that makes people more comfortable, but doesn’t make Mencía stand out.  The ideal is somewhere in between.  Unfortunately for every great Bierzo, there are a handful of indifferent or poor ones….and the trendiness of Mencía is only exacerbating the situation.  Mencía is top flight grape, but it is a difficult grape to get right….it is hard to tame its intensity and preserve its delicate floral aromas.  It is not the easiest grape to drink but when it’s just right it has given me some of my best Spanish wine experiences.  The wine I’m rating today is considered Bierzo’s top joven-style Mencía.

Wine:  Pétalos del Bierzo 2006
Winery:  Bodegas Descendientes de J. Palacios
Denominacion de Origen (DO): Bierzo
Alc: 14%
Grape varieties: 100% Mencía
Oak regime:  4 months in oak
Price:  12€ retail in Madrid

Tasting notes
Visual:  Medium intensity…very youthful blue-toned ruby.
Nose:  At first sweet candy carbonic maceration nose, but with some air, some more complexity appears…raspberry and minty fruit     
Mouth:  At first quite simple and deceptively jammy….eventually a herbal, leafy element adds complexity to the raspberry fruit.  Nice fruity finish, but a bit short in the mouth. A bit hot on the palate due to a high alcohol content.

Conclusion: I never been totally convinced by the extremely high ratings this wine seems to get.  It has some very interesting fruit once it’s open a while, but has a sweet candy element that puts me off.   It’s not very floral or highly aromatic…which is the element that I enjoy most in Mencía.  It’s also a bit alcoholic most years which heightens that perception of sweetness.  Finally for me the price point is a little high for this wine….one of the most expensive joven wines around. 

The picture I’ve included of Pétalos is from the website:  www.vinissimus.com.  For some of my favourite Mencía, you can read the following post:  http://www.planetavino.net/2008/01/04/holiday-wine-series-mencia/