Elegance, purity, and ethereal lift. If those aren’t terms you’d normally use to describe Spanish wines, you’re just not drinking enough Mencía. A wine like Quinta do Estranxeiro is the perfect place to start. Tense, mineral, loaded with red-fruited charm, it’s miles away from the rustic powerhouses so much of Spain produces. This hails from “Green Spain,” after all, one of the most singular and jaw droppingly gorgeous wine regions in the world. And there’s no better guide to this corner of the country than Quinta do Estranxeiro. Its founder, Eulogio Pomares, helped establish Albariño as one of the world’s most important white wines by working with old vines in extraordinary sites and crafting wines of pointillist complexity. Now, he’s doing the same for Mencía. “O Estranxeiro” will sit happily alongside anybody’s collection of Loire Valley Cab Franc, Chianti Classico, and, yes, even great Burgundy. Grab a bottle or six and discover your new Mencía obsession!
Ribeira Sacra ranks alongside places like the Mosel, the Douro, and Côte-Rôtie as one of the most dramatic in the wine world. In fact, it may put all the others to shame. Here, vineyards perch at vertiginous angles overlooking the Miño and Sil rivers. Far too steep to use a tractor or even a horse on, these old plantings have been worked by hand for centuries. So difficult is it that locally such viticulture is called “heroica.” Soils are mostly ancient granite, with smatterings of slate. Mencía is the key grape here. It’s a variety indigenous to this corner of the Iberian peninsula, although before DNA testing was completed, some aficionados thought it may have actually been Cabernet Franc. Mencía is Spain’s answer to Pinot Noir or Gamay, a variety that combines aromatic lift and delicacy with an unmistakable streak of granitic minerality.
Quinta do Estranxeiro’s owner, Eulogio Pomares, is a trailblazer in Spanish wine. He’s a native Galician, and has done more than perhaps any other winemaker to put the region’s wines on the map. He first made a splash in neighboring Rias Baixas with his family’s winery, Bodegas Zárate. Through fastidious farming and perfectionist winemaking, Eulogio established Albariño as a variety capable of producing not just refreshing quaffers, but ageable and complex treasures. He was also a fierce defender of Galicia’s little-known red varieties, and his exploration of them led him to Ribeira Sacra. In 2019, he began Quinta do Estranxeiro along with his wife, Rebeca Montero. They work with two primary sites, both planted to bush vines of at least 50 years of age. Their holdings in the Amandi zone feature slate and gravel intermixed, with more southerly exposures, making for more powerful fruit. In A Cova, where the terroir is strictly granite and there’s more cooling effect from the river, they get tensile structure. The two holdings are always blended into the single red wine they make.
The 2021 “O Estranxeiro” Tinto is almost entirely Mencía, with a tiny smattering of unidentified red grapes. The fruit is handpicked and destemmed, fermented for two weeks in chestnut casks. It then ages in a mix of large Italian botti and concrete tanks for 8 months. Immediately upon pouring “O Estranxeiro” you’ll see we’re not in the realm of inky, oaky Spanish reds; it’s a limpid ruby color belying the elegance within. The nose is redolent of crushed raspberries, cherry pit, strawberry leaf, and red plum fruit, beneath which thrums a deep gunflint minerality. There’s cracked black pepper and a hint of sage-like herbaceousness, making for a seriously complex aromatic spectrum. The palate is firmly medium-bodied, tannins prominent but polished. Acid is the main structural element here, imbuing the wine with incredible freshness and elegance. There’s no doubt this’ll seriously reward medium-term aging, and it’s absolutely delicious now. Time to become enamored with Mencía!
