Mencía

Mencía is the red grape of north-west Spain, and its reputation has been transformed in the last twenty-five years. It was long assumed to be related to Cabernet Franc, which it is not; DNA has shown it to be identical to Jaen, grown in Portugal's Dão.

For most of the twentieth century it was grown on the fertile valley floors of Bierzo at high yields and made into thin, simple wine. The change came in the late 1990s, when producers including Álvaro Palacios and his nephew turned their attention to the old, low-yielding, terraced vineyards on the steep slate and granite slopes above the valley — vines often eighty years old or more, on sites too difficult to farm profitably by conventional measures.

The wines from those sites are a different proposition entirely: medium-bodied, aromatic and mineral, with red cherry, raspberry, violet and liquorice over a distinctly stony, graphite-like character. Acidity is fresh, tannins are fine, and there is a floral perfume that immediately invites comparison with Pinot Noir or with the Loire's Cabernet Franc.

Bierzo is the best-known appellation, and Ribeira Sacra in Galicia — with its near-vertical terraces above the Sil and Miño rivers, some of the most dramatic vineyards in Europe — produces a lighter, fresher, more ethereal version.

The grape's Atlantic setting matters: this is green, wet, cool Spain, and the wines have a freshness that the country's more famous reds do not.