Bierzo´s wines are great. I think that article is going to convince all the forum.

Best Bierzo´s Wines:

- Corullón 2001 => 57,90 €
- Paixar 2002 => 45,00 €
- Pétalos del Bierzo => 12,95 €
- Cepas Viejas => 15,90 €

German Web link
Spain’s Frontier: The ‘Cool’ Reds


Using French Methods, Vineyards in El Bierzo Showcase the Local Grape
By WILLIAM ECHIKSON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 12, 2005

CORULLÓN, Spain — When European wine lovers want to uncork something new and powerful, they should begin to look to the little-known region in isolated northern Spain called El Bierzo.

More than almost anywhere else in the Old World, an exciting can-do attitude exists these days among winemakers in Spain. Centuries of tradition are being overthrown in an explosion of creativity. As I wrote last year, this revolution has spurred the emergence of previously neglected regions such as Priorat, near Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast. Within a decade of starting to produce serious wine, Priorat already challenges traditional Spanish wine-growing regions such as La Rioja and Ribera del Duero.

Recently, friends in the wine business have told me Spanish pioneers are moving north to El Bierzo in search of cooler climes to make world-class “cool” red and white wines. Until now, Spain has produced few memorable whites, and its classy reds, including those from Priorat, have a “hot” tone, natural in a growing climate where sun-drenched grapes and the strong natural spices in Mediterranean grapes produce dense, full-bodied, jammy wines. Wines from cooler climates often have “cool” flavors, fresher, fruitier and more mineral.

El Bierzo is filling this Spanish gap in cool reds, as I found out on a recent trip.

“The climate and land are exceptional,” says Ricardo Palacios, looking over his vineyards in Corullón clinging to a steep hillside shimmering under the summer sun. “It’s like Burgundy here, with warm summers, cool nights and plenty of precipitation — and we think we can make Burgundy-style terroir wines.” These are wines from single vineyards with tastes that echo their specific landscape. In the past few vintages, I believe he has succeeded, and the Palacios operation stands at the top of the El Bierzo pinnacle, both physically — with its hillside vineyards — and in its widespread international distribution.

The majority of wine from El Bierzo is sold locally and often remains primitive because it is made from unripe grapes in antiquated cellars. But some locals, and a group of ambitious outsiders such as the Palacios family, are going upscale and changing the region. Their wines are found more and more often in shops outside the region and also outside Spain. In addition to Palacios, some good names to look out for include Dominio de Tares and Luna Beberide (which also makes a wine called Paixar).

The El Bierzo region is part of the León Province in Spain’s rural northwest. It lies on the pilgrim’s path to Santiago de Compostela, and wine has been made there to fortify walkers for centuries. (The road to Santiago also passes through other areas in Spain and France, and historians note that as monks were the medieval world’s best winemakers, this may have helped raise winemaking to a cult in places such as Burgundy.)

The local grape in El Bierzo is called Mencía. Traditionally, almost all the wine was sold locally in bulk because the local winemakers focused on high yields, harvesting early and making the wine in primitive cellars. The big cooperatives that dominated the market didn’t push for quality. The result was bitter, oxidized wines.

One look at the region’s striking geography shows it can do much better. North of Madrid, the plains of Castilla y León are flat, treeless and arid — a barren landscape dotted with isolated villages. True to the new Spain, a new highway knifes through the dullness until, 430 kilometers northwest of Madrid, the road rises, and the summer landscape, despite Spain’s drought this year, turns green. In sight are the Sierra de la Cabrera mountains, punctuated with cyprus trees. The scorching heat is replaced by a gentle breeze.

It is a rural/miner region — the largest town is Ponferrada, a templar town with only 74,000 inhabitants. The main winemaking village, Villafranca del Bierzo, features medieval buildings and spectacular walking routes.

My first visit to a winemaker was to see Raúl Pérez, perhaps El Bierzo’s most ambitious native winemaker, as compared with the outsiders Palacios, who come from La Rioja. The stocky, ponytailed, 32-year-old bachelor drove me in his jeep through the nearby vineyards, which have been in his family since 1750. His cellar is newly constructed; Mr. Pérez’s father grew grapes but didn’t bottle his own wine. Like most older El Bierzo winemakers, he also grew grain and cultivated fruits and vegetables. Mr. Pérez studied oenology in far-off Valencia on the Mediterranean coast and returned home determined to concentrate on wine. For a decade now, Mr. Pérez has been a pioneer and an avid experimenter, planting small plots of various non-Spanish red and white grape varieties such as French Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer and Pinot Noir. “I like to have fun,” he says.

All are interesting, but by far his most ambitious and successful wines are made with the local Mencía. His El Castro de Valtuille, around €15 a bottle, bursts with flavors of cherries, blackberries, raspberries, tobacco and truffles. His premium wine, simply called Valtuille, sells for about €35 and is a more concentrated version. These are chewy wines, high in alcohol (14%), but they remain vibrant, with a freshness and coolness often lacking in other Spanish reds. These wines are available in selected wine shops both in the U.S. and Europe. Look for the 2003 vintage — it is the best ever from the region.

In contrast to Mr. Pérez, the Palacios family comes far from El Bierzo. For four generations, they have owned the Bodegas Palacios Remondo estate in the most traditional and esteemed of Spanish winegrowing regions, La Rioja, in the north, toward the French border.

In the early 1980s, Alvaro Palacios was sent to Bordeaux to study. When he returned to Spain a few years later, he wanted to make the type of modern wines that were becoming popular there, using ripe fruit, harvested late, and vinifying it slowly in oak barrels. These “fruity forward” Bordeaux are ready to drink young, with fresh, jammy flavors. Back in Spain, Mr. Palacios called his wines “alta expression,” literally high expression. They were purple in color, an explosion of fruit and flavor, compared with the traditional pinkish-red Rioja.

Mr. Palacios’s parents refused to let him change the way things were done on the family estate. So he took out a loan and bought vineyards in Priorat. His fresh, powerful, modern wines and those by other vintners in Priorat using similar methods soon began garnering praise. In the meantime, the family firm was in trouble. After his father’s death in 2000, Mr. Palacios said he would be willing to take over the business, on the condition his brother Antonio, who was then running the estate, leave. His mother, sister and several of his brothers eventually agreed.

Today, Mr. Palacios is Spain’s most famous winemaker, having revived the family bodega in La Rioja and still producing top-flight wines in Priorat. His new priority is El Bierzo. Since 1998, Mr. Palacios and his nephew Ricardo, who also went to oenology school and did internships in Bordeaux, have been purchasing the El Bierzo mountainsides they believed held the most promise — particularly around the town of Corullón.

Their El Bierzo wines are less flamboyant, and less of a blockbuster in taste, than those made by Mr. Pérez. But they are more ambitious and more focused, displaying greater finesse and elegance, and a pungent peppery note. While Mr. Pérez’s Valtuille vines are in the valley — the easiest place to cultivate them because tractors can be used and water can be brought in for irrigation if needed — the Palacios family bought up the unwanted hillside vines, many of them decades old. Growing at elevations from 400 meters to 1,000 meters, their production is low, but their quality is high as the grapes get more sun. “We couldn’t use tractors here,” says Oscar Alegre, the Palacios estate’s export manager.

The philosophy is to mimic the elite Burgundy practices, making wines from grapes grown in single vineyards, with names referring to the geographic location — such as San Martín, Moncerbal, Las Lamas, Fontelas and La Faraona — and then aging them in small Burgundy-style barrels of new oak. The top single-vineyard Palacios wines from El Bierzo go for €50 and up. But the more basic Pétalos del Bierzo (€10.78) and Corullón (€31.17) cost far less and are a good introduction to the style: They have soft, sweet, ripe tannins and a bracing scent of blackberries and cherries, with hints of chocolate and pepper on the finish. Over the past few years, I have learned how good Spanish red wines can be. El Bierzo showed me yet another side to this up-and-coming wine success story.

Superatii,
Thanks for the info! I picked up a bottle of '04 Descendientes de José Palacios Bierzo yesterday at Wine Library. I've never had a wine from Bierzo, but the price and the notes on the wine intrigued me.

Any idea on how long these wines should sleep before opening?

Hi Festiva! In my opinion your choice is perfect!
I think these wines (tintos del Bierzo) should sleep about 24/48 hours. When you will open the bottle, it would be better to wait 1 hour before
savouring.

quote:

24/48 hours

I guess I phrased my question incorrectly. What I meant to ask was - How long should the 2004's be aged before hitting maturity? Should they be drunk now, or held for a couple of years?

Oh I´m sorry Festiva. I´m sicilian so I didn´t understand your question as well (concerning to expression "sleeping").
No problem! you can drink the Bierzo now, these tintos are special. Enjoy it!

Superatii,

Thanks for the response! I'll give it a try over the next week or so.