Mencía is the red grape of Spain's cool, green northwest, an old variety strung along the pilgrim road to Santiago and known across the border in Portugal as Jaen. Its heartland is Bierzo, where steep terraces of slate hold some of Iberia's oldest vines. For much of the twentieth century it was dismissed as a light café wine, the product of high-yielding vines on the fertile valley floors.
The revision came from the hillsides. From 1999, Álvaro Palacios and his nephew Ricardo Pérez, working the old slopes above Corullón, showed what low-yielding mencía on poor slate could be: a perfumed, mineral red of sour cherry, pomegranate, flowers and wet stone — Atlantic Spain's answer to the fine-boned reds of cooler climates.