Why Aren't You Drinking Mencía?

Why don't you dirty, little, fine customers of ours drink Mencia? What's the problem? Mencia. Is it like a Pavlovian thing where you just run away? I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. Mencia is one of the world's great grape varieties. Ambierzo is one of the world's great grape growing places. I had to say that very slowly. That's very difficult. Thank you. And, for some reason, I have no idea why you guys shy away from this when we tell you, and we berate you, and we remind you, and we coddle you into trying to drink more and more Mencia from Bierzo. And all the time we are met with, uh, I don't know about that. I don't know why. I don't know why. It's easy to say, Mencia. Is that hard? Does it sound like a disease or something? Yeah, Mencia. Bierzo. What a fun place when you say Bierzo. It's like ice cream or something. Like, I don't know. It's fun. We're going to try this again, gang. If you don't buy this, I'm going to punch Patrick really hard in the shoulder. So, which you probably won't notice because I don't punch really hard. But anyway, this is it. This is your shot. We are going to Mencia you. And, you know, the thing is, our team downstairs, they are starting to Mencia now even. They could not resist the siren call of this particular wine. This is the Casa de Burbía, Bierzo Mencia Casa. Now, this is from Nemesio Fernandez and his son Isidro. Nemesio was a pioneer. You know, we talk a lot about Raul Perez in Bierzo and in Mencia, which he was, Raúl Pérez. And, of course, we talk about Palacios in Bierzo in this area. We have huge, big deal guys. But Nemesio, he was the stealth mode dude. Started in 1989. He started purchasing plots of vineyards in Bierzo, around the village of, I learned how to say this today, Valtuie. Like, did you know how to say that? Right? No. Valtuie de Arriba. And he was one of the first on his block to do this. Now, he was getting the vineyards cheap because Bierzo was in the process of replanting a lot of Palomino, white grape variety, Palomino Fino, to Mencia. And he was like, I'll tell you what, I'm just going to take this Palomino vineyard off your hands. This 70-year-old, this 100-year-old Palomino vineyard off your hands. I'm going to give you a good price. and most of the folks said yes to the tune of he put together 27 hectares from 52 different plots that he purchased insane now he was a smarty pants instead of ripping out the palomino and replanting Mencia he grafted let's talk about grafting this is when you take a cutting of old like massal selection in this case Mencia from top vineyards from top old vineyards in Bierzo and you cut you cut off the palomino vine leaving the root stock there and then you attach the Mencia the the young little Mencia sapling to the palomino root stock and from there it grows as Mencia the root stock supplies Mencia it's not palomino anymore it's been taken off and boom you have Mencia but you have Mencia that's grafted on the 70 to 100 year old Palomino material Got it? Right? Pretty heavy. Smart cookie. Super cool dude, right? And he was ahead of the game because just a year or two later, Bierzo got its D.O. Maybe he knew something somebody else didn't? Sorry, honey, I did the old pour and lick. My bad. Now, he produces a number of wines in Valtruyer d'Arriba with different parcels. But this, this is the gateway drug. This is the entry-level, super-duper delicious Mencia wine and he produces from a single parcel down in the more clay soils from 70 plus year old vines now whether these are actually 70 plus original Mencia or the 70 plus Palomino grafted over to Mencia I do not know but in fact the root stock is 70 years old so we call it a 70 year old vine all day long 100% Mencia aged all in French oak small French oak barrels and all grown organically he's completely organic he uses all indigenous yeast right so he's not like some corporate tank farm dude he's not some shill he's not some he's doing the Raul Perez thing he's doing the Palacios thing he's doing everything right there he just is a lower profile cat and probably got a little more run in Spain would be my guess like in Spain his wines are a little more known but we're gonna try and change that today okay let's talk about why Mencia may be difficult for you guys I think one of the issues and I'm not apologizing for you but just kind of stating the obvious Mencia can be a bit of a chameleon, right? we've talked about this in the past in some of the other you know videos we've done where Mencia can manifest almost like Cabernet Franc it can manifest like Syrah it can manifest like the Loire Valley it can manifest like the Rhone Valley you know based on the terroirs based on the location and the age of the vines Mencia can play a number of different ways. In this case, no wonder the crew's hammering this wine. In this case, this one splits the difference. Rowan Waite, but with some of the signature Cabernet Franc characters, but this is more powerful, more powerful than the Cabernet Franc versions, the Cabernet Franc-esque versions of Mencia that we see. This one's got serious stuffing for the money. Wow. Well, even at its original retail. We'll get to that other time. House wine, the name is Cassar. Dude, where do you guys get a load of the price. This stuff is sick. And it's the perfect version of Mencia for you guys to get initiated with this grape variety. Huge color, tons of fruit, rich, beautiful, but not heavy. This is the one, you guys. This is it. This is your Mencia. It's go time. It's got scores, two or three, 90 plus scores. All right, let's get to the price. $20 retail wine. Cheers. Thank you. $20 retail wine usually. Already a deal with that. We showed you pictures of the Mencia vineyards. I don't know. We'll see what his vineyards look like when we get to the thing. But they're heavy duty vineyards. Steep hillsides. Very difficult to grow. Old vines. Low yields. So to get this wine at its original retail of $20, you're already in deal category. You're already in that, wow, hey, damn, that's a lot of wine for $20. Today, $9.98. $9.98. Patrick, you don't look too enthused by that. I don't see you jumping around like at a TV church rally or something. How are we making money? We are here for the customer, Patrick. The customer always wins. You don't agree. No, he's not happy. This wine's so friggin' classy. Ten bucks? If I paid $30 for this wine, I'd be cool. I would not flinch a minute. $10? $10? Crazy times, Patrick. Crazy times. Regardless today is your day, it is time for you to buy Mencia, it's time for you to buy a bunch of it, ten bucks a bottle this should disappear in minutes after we click the send button you know what to do, click down below, buy this wine, subscribe to our daily email offers and subscribe to our YouTube channel it's one of the best in the industry where you get incredible, incredible commentary from some of the greatest wine people in the world, me and you get to buy really cool wine. It's the bestest. Cheers.