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 Ra£l P,rez, 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