Bodegas y Viñedos Merayo, La Tres Filas Mencia, DO Bierzo, Spain, 2020

Producer Profile

There is rather lovely balance of old and young at Merayo.

80 year old Mencia bush vines give their fruit to the young, dynamic winemaker Juan Merayo who then crafts wonderful wines full of fresh, perfumed characters and ripe red fruit evocative of Mencia. Everything is handpicked with the appropriate reverence for these octogenarian vines before the grapes receive careful temperature controlled ferments and sensitive use of French and American oak to ensure Juan creates the expressive wines he is looking for.

Viticulture

From vineyards with vines averaging 80 + years old, some up to 120 years old, with a yield of around 4500 kilos per ha.

Winemaking

Fermentation in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. Aged for 6 months on its lees in American and French oak barrels.

Oak Ageing

Time: 6 Months
Type: French and American
% wine oaked: 100
% new oak: None

Tasting Note

Cherry red with violet hues. Intense, fresh, elegant nose where red fruit, strawberry and raspberry sensations dominate, as well as floral and violet notes. In the background, very well integrated vanilla, tobacco and minerals. Elegant and silky. On the palate it is fresh, with red fruit. Round, soft, silky tannin. Balanced acidity, freshness and varietal notes dominate in perfect harmony with wood flavours that give the wine complexity. The oak ageing is well integrated and very elegant.

Food Matching

Cured beef, roast turkey and lamb!

Awards

DWWA 2023 Best in Show 97 Points
Our Best in Show journey across Northern Spain continues with a 2020 Bierzo, grown just across the provincial border from Galicia into Castilla y Léon. It’s another zone of steep slopes and old vines – the variety in this case being Mencia (known as Jaen in Portugal’s Dão region). This wine is deep black-red in colour and vivacious and urgent in aroma: wild plums mingled with the woodland scents of leaf, copse and forest floor. The palate is fruit-packed and vibrant, vigorous with an energy derived both from ripe acidity and fresh though smooth tannins; look out, too, for a stony, bitter-edged finish perhaps derived from the region’s slate soils. Wonderful drinking now in the flush of youth, but fruit of this quality will hold well for a few years yet. 97 Points, 2023.