Descendientes Petalos del Bierzo Vinas Viejas 2022

Descendientes Petalos del Bierzo Vinas Viejas 2022

Descendientes de J. Palacios
$22.00

Grape: Mencía, White Grapes
Vintage: 2022
Type: Red

Produced by Ricardo Palacios in the rugged Bierzo region, this red wine blends eighty-five percent mencía with ten percent white grapes and five percent other native red varieties. The fruit is sourced from over ninety hectares of old, steeply terraced vineyards farmed under strict organic and biodynamic viticulture protocols. The winemaking incorporates a small whole-cluster component during spontaneous fermentation in large oak and stainless steel vats. It matures for ten months in French oak barrels of various sizes.

It pours a dark ruby color, opening with expressive aromas of wild blackberry, fresh red plum, rockrose, and Mediterranean aromatic herbs. On the palate, the medium-bodied frame is juicy and round, balancing a velvety fruit presentation with a fine-grained tannin structure. Savory notes of damp earth and cracked black pepper blend into the fruit core across mid-palate. A clean wave of mineral acidity keeps the mouthfeel refreshed.

"Even once he made waves with his Priorat wines, Álvaro’s pioneering spirit never wavered. In 1997, Álvaro and his nephew Ricardo Pérez Palacios were seduced by the undiscovered potential of the Bierzo region in north-western Spain, a place then better known for agriculture and its gold mining past.

Bierzo is home to the Mencía grape, often grown on very steep, precipitous slopes on pre-Cumbrian soils, some of the oldest soils in Europe. The region’s, and indeed Palacios’s, most famous vineyard ‘La Faraona’ is at the highest point of the hill of Corullón, at an altitude of almost 1000 meters and lies on a tectonic fault. This combination of altitude, old vines and complex geology gives an incredibly intricate, ethereal and spell-binding wine. Indeed, these Mencia-based wines, down to the region’s flagship wine, Petalos, perfectly express the wild and untamed character of Bierzo. look for aromas of wild thyme, dried lavender and roses, underpinned by an underlying graphite-like minerality.

Bierzo is on the Camino del Sangiago and in fact, the route used to go right past the old Palacios winery in Villafranca del Bierzo. More recently, Álvaro and Ricardo have built a new state of the art winery in amongst the vineyards of Corullón, better suited to making and storing the region’s best wines."