Is Mencia my favorite Spanish wine? Oh god, it’s so hard. Between Priorat and Ribera and Rueda and Rioja…. WHERE do you decide???? The amount of pure deliciousness and absolute purity of spirit and ageability and depth… It’s so hard to decide. Let’s not have favorites, mmm-kay? This one registers deep brooding ruby in the glass, thick and concentrated right out to the rim. A nose California Palates will hate: all sharp vegetal and stunning minerality–the combination of which make the all-hallow *fruit* a second-fiddle to all points expressed. Musty leather and piquant herb, the berry playing in on wings of dispelled grandeur where picking apart is the main-stay.
In the mouth, everything coalesces into perfection. Deep blackberry churns a spirit difficult-to-quantify in New-World terms, where flabby fruit and obese conflagration are the moments alleged *wine enthusiasts* migrate toward but here: they are the definition of obtuse nuances generating sublime beauty. It’s not a thin wine. It’s not a *natural beauty* lavishing oddities on the palate. This is the most gorgeous wine I’ve had this week–and it’s not expensive or hard to find. But the 99% will HATE this wine for its non-Wagner doses of extreme. Lavish cherry captivates and aggrandizes. green apple and nectarine fill in the outer banks where rusty expression and savory instances of ridiculousness abound. Every restaurant in California should glass these wines–but they won’t. Because American hates this shit. They just can’t grasp the beauty. It’s an intellectual thing. The palate of the 99 creates forms of *beauty* marketers gravitate to and somms turn a winking eye to and wine like this are forever left in the dust.
2018 AVANCIA ‘Cuvee de O’ Valdeorras DOC Mencia Spain 13.0
Stephen McConnell 