2021 Raúl Pérez ‘Ultreia St-Jacques’ Mencía Bierzo

WA93 The biggest volume of the winery is the 2021 Ultreia Saint Jacques, which represents some 170,000 bottles, and according to Raúl Pérez, it’s the most difficult wine to make here. They now work a lot to produce this wine, a blend of 11 wines selected from the 17 they made. It’s a wine that represents Bierzo and is from a year when they used more grapes from sandy soils. It has 13.16% alcohol and a pH of 3.66; it’s serious and restrained but juicy and easy to drink. Seventy percent of the wine matured in barrel and the rest in troncoconic oak vats.
Estate Notes: A mencia-dominant field blend with Bastardo (Trousseau), Garnacha Tintorera (Alicante Bouschet), Palomino, Doña Blanca and more • blended from many different parcels, mostly planted between the 1890s and the 1940s in and around Valtuille de Abajo on clay, alluvial stones and sand • 50-60% whole-cluster spontaneous fermentation in 13000L open-top oak vats with 60-day-plus post-fermentation maceration • racked to 225-500L barrels for elevage until the next harvest • unfined and unfiltered