Description
REVIEWS
“Gregory Pérez is one f***ing talented winemaker – just buy every white he makes. These are whites to decant, think Savennières.” Alice Feiring, www.alicefeiring.com
TASTING NOTES
We don’t quote Alice Feiring too often but this was so colourful that we indulged ourselves. It captures some of our own excitement when we first came across this producer. Still, we’re not sure about the requirement to decant Mengoba’s whites. You can, of course. Why not? But it isn’t a necessity – decanting them directly into our mouths has worked well enough for us! Mengoba’s wild, rural vineyards are at nose-bleed altitudes of up to 2500 ft above sea level. This is stunning country; a landscape of wild, natural beauty – a quality that we have found mirrored in the Mengoba wines. The patches of old, goblet vines here are strewn across small, isolated pockets, nestled amongst the densely forested high country. The only wine travellers you get up here are those wine fanatics chasing the artisanal, the esoteric, the blood of the mountain.
Bierzo is a region that totally missed the industrialisation that so much of Europe went through post WW2. It was too difficult to mechanise and there was simply no interest in the area until a clutch of winemakers realised the remarkable potential of the high altitudes, old vines and quartz and slate rich soils. French winemaker Gregory Pérez was one of those drawn to the area by the sheer potential of the remarkable terroir as well as the two principal, indigenous grape varieties of Bierzo: Godello and Mencia. Pérez had already become very well known for his work at Bodegas Luna Beberide, where he started over a decade ago, before launching his own project, Mengoba with the 2007 vintage. Since then Mengoba – an acronym of “Men” from Mencia, “Go” from Godello and “Ba” from Valenciana (the local patois for Doña Blanca) – has fast established itself as one of the region’s benchmarks.
Today, Pérez makes around 5000 cases of wonderful, high country-wines from a patchwork of vineyards in the hills of the Alto Bierzo. The vineyard work is absolutely artisanal; the vines are grown according to organic principles and Perez’s highest plot remains one of the Spain’s few quality producing vineyards still ploughed by cow. As the authors of The Finest Wines of Rioja and North West Spain (Jesús Barquín et al) point out; this is a “name to watch.”
Both of Mengoba’s enigmatic reds, the junior ‘Brezo’ and the ‘Mengoba’ proper, are made from old, head-pruned Mencia grown on the hillside vineyards of Espanillo, Valtuille, Villafranca de El Bierzo and Carracedo. Many of you will be familiar with the delicious Mencia of our Valdeorras grower, Val De Sil. Mengoba’s reds are a different kettle of fish. Although Bierzo is a highland continuation of Valdeorras, it enjoys a more continental climate with less rainfall, hotter summers and colder winters than Valdeorras (which forms part of the Atlantic-influenced Galician highlands). Bierzo’s mountains form the westernmost shoulder of the inland plateau of Castilla y Leon.
All things being equal, these climatic and altitudinal difference results in a darker, richer and more intense manifestation of Mencia (when compared to the lacy, pretty and elegant Galician examples). White Bierzo is a rare sight. With Mengoba’s blancos, we again have two tiers, the Brezo Blanco and Mengoba Blanco, both made from Godello and Doña Blanco (the latter a rare native that time nearly forgot). The style of these whites is mountain-pure; mineral and intensely energetic.
