The Wine Pair Podcast

WTF is Mencía?

• The Wine Pair • Season 1 • Episode 181

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Ok, in this episode, all hell breaks loose! It starts out innocently enough - an introduction to the Spanish wine Mencía, a quick interview with a real listener, some wine in the news this week, but once we hit the second tasting, pure chaos. Proof that our tastings are real, and that our podcast is unrehearsed and, frankly, when we get to the tasting section, unpredictable. You have to listen to the very end to get the full experience. But, we digress. If you don’t know the wine Mencía from the Galicia region of Spain, then it’s time to get on board. Often compared to Pinot Noir, Gamay, or Cabernet Franc - which it was originally thought to be a clone of until DNA tests proved otherwise - it is a medium bodied, fruity, gastronomic wine (a fancy way of saying that it is meant to be drunk with food). Listen in to find out more about this wine, and lots of other crazy stuff. Wines reviewed in this episode: 2021 Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía, 2019 Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía

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Show Notes

Episode #181: WTF is Mencía?  00:00

Hello fellow Wine Hounds! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair!

If you are new to our podcast, here is what you can expect. If you love wine and want to find great wines at affordable prices, and you want to expand your wine horizons, and you want to have some laughs and fun while doing it - then you are in the right place! Each week we explore a different wine varietal, style, brand, or region of the winemaking world, and learn about what makes them worth knowing about. And then we taste 2-3 of those wines that are reasonably priced to let you know if they are worth your hard earned money. If that feels like your vibe, then we are super happy you are here. And, we are proud to say that Decanter Magazine calls us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining.

We have our first guest appearance by a real, honest to goodness listener to the show who gave us the inspiration for this week’s tribe name. As we record this, we are doing all of this out of order, but through the magic of editing, I am hoping that this quick conversation with Ryan goes over without a hitch!

Interview with Listener Ryan and his name for our tribe: Wine Hounds 02:25


We are finally getting to the last of the wines that Justin L asked us if we would do an episode on, and this one I am really excited about because it is a wine we have never had before, and because it is a wine often compared to Pinot Noir, Gamay, and Cabernet Franc. The wine is Mencía - pronounced as Men-Thee-Ah, and it comes from the Northwest region of Spain known as Galicia, and this is, interestingly enough, a wine from Spain named for the grape. As we have mentioned many times, European wines, especially from France, Italy, and Spain can be confusing for many wine drinkers because they are often named for the region rather than the grape.

But hold on, Carmela, because before we get to Mencía, we need to do

WIne in the news this week: The Wine Pair Podcast in The Takeout 07:36


Ok, this is going to be maybe a little braggy, but the wine in the news this week is about us. There were five articles on wine that came out this past weekend from the website The Takeout which is an online magazine about all things food, and we were featured in them. The only comment Carmela could make to me after these all came out is why aren’t we getting paid for them, which is a totally fair question. 

For a little story on how this all happened, I follow a couple of services that ask for submissions for reporters from experts, so I scan for opportunities related to wine, and if I find something I think I can answer well, I will submit. In the last couple of months we have been featured in articles on Foodie, Chowhound, and, now, the Takeout. You can find links to them in the blog section of our website, by the way. If you didn’t know we have a blog, now you do. 

So, there was a submission request from The Takeout that listed 10 questions on 5 subjects, so I thought, what the heck, I’ll do it.  The journalist who sent the request named Lauren really liked our submission and we thought, well, maybe she’ll use us for some stories. It usually takes some time between when we submit something and when it actually lands on the interwebs, but these came out really fast - in less than a week - and I was shocked that all five basically came out at the same time. 

Do you want to know what the articles were? I mean, I know you know, but maybe the people out there in listening land want to know. Right?

  • One of the articles was on chilling red wines which we did a minisode about a few months ago, 
  • another was on not serving white wine too cold, 
  • the third was on how to tell if a wine is corked, 
  • the fourth was on what kind of wine should be used for Sangria 
  • and the last was on common kitchen items that can be used as decanters

So be on the lookout for them, and if you find them, let us know, and even better, like them, send them to friends and family, and tell the authors of the article how amazing and brilliant you think we are! But seriously, we are flattered to be mentioned and used as sources, and we hope it leads to both spreading some wine knowledge and busting some myths, and us getting some more listeners!

But we are not here to talk about how cool we are or how we are officially the final word on things like chilling wine and Sangria. No, Carmela. We are here to talk about the great but underappreciated Spanish wine called Mencía, and we have two Mencía wines that we are going to taste and review today to see if they are worth running out and finding . . . 

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

Thank you for listening to us and for supporting our show, and if you haven’t  had the chance to do so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and leave us a nice rating and review  to help us grow our listeners - and a huge thank you to all of you who have subscribed already! 

You can also follow us on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast, and on Bluesky. You can contact us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, and you can sign up for our email newsletter there and you can also visit our “Shop Wine” and “Shop Accessories” sections where you can find links to buy the wines that we rate as buys in each episode and accessories we think are great choices for wine lovers and as gifts, too. 

And we want to make content you care about and you like, so send us a note or DM us and give us some feedback or let us know if there are wines you want us to try or wine making areas of the world you are curious about - and we’ll take care of it! joe@thewinepairpodcast.com

  • Shout out to Shekar who sent us an article on Washington State wineries looking beyond wine tasting to draw people in
  • Oregon Mobile Esthetics on IG who sent us the nicest DM about how she is liking the show and asked us if we would consider revisiting orange wine, so we are putting it on the list!
  • Shout out to Geoffrey K who emailed us and asked us why there is so much cursing on our podcast. It is marked Explicit, Geoffrey. 
  • JDM on BS who told us about some Primitivo he drank and how different a Primitivo and a Sonoma Zin - so we appreciate him giving us the info
  • Tips2LiveBy who we have now convinced to go to Olive Garden and what we really want to know is if they cut you off from the 25 cent samples!


And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should recommend The Wine Pair Podcast to - because the best way for us to grow listeners is when you tell your family and friends about us - and this week, we want you to recommend us to anyone who loves Pinot Noir or Cabernet Franc or Gamay because we are supposed to be tasting a wine that has similar characteristics. 


RESEARCH ARTICLES AND LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE


Topic: WTF is Mencía? 18:16

Carmela, let’s talk about, as the title of this episode suggests we do, what the eff is Mencia. When we, as English speakers, see the name we want to say Mencía, but in Spain, it is known as Men-thee-ah because the Spanish like to give a good lisp - which don’t you think the word lisp is a little ironic. A little fun fact for you that you can either wow or annoy your friends with - as you also say things like Valencia and Ibiza.

Mencía is a wine and grape that really doesn’t trace its history back too far - at least in terms of being a specifically recognized grape. According to information I found using the Google machine, it was first mentioned in the late 1800’s in the area of León in northwest Spain. The name "Mencía" itself has roots from the Middle Ages when it was a popular girl's name, and there's a hypothesis out there that a Portuguese noblewoman named Mencía Lopez de Haro could have inspired the naming of a grape and that the grape might also have originally come from Portugal.

For a long time Mencía was mistakenly thought to be an ancient clone of Cabernet Franc, and it is often compared to Cabernet Franc in terms of taste, and acidity and tannins and body. Some also say if you like Pinot Noir you will like Mencía, so that gives you some early clues about what kind of wine it is. However, DNA tests showed that Mencía is genetically identical to the Portuguese grape named Jaen [ha-En] do Dão (or simply Jaen) - and that is why the name may have come from that Portuguese lady! Full circle - ok.

The area where Mencía is grown today is mostly in the Galicia region of Spain, which is that area of Spain just above Portugal, and Mencía is the most-planted red grape in almost all of Galicia's wine regions, with the exception of Rías Baixas where it ranks second to a grape called Sousón.

Like a lot of European wines, and this is similar to the story we told last week about Primitivo, Mencía had a pretty crummy reputation for a long time. Historically, Mencía vines were often over-planted in super fertile areas which lead to high yields, but also lead to a wine that was considered diluted,lean, and light - and intended to be drunk young. These wines had a reputation for being low in alcohol and very acidic and not very flavorful. Additionally, the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s contributed to the destruction and neglect of many vineyards in regions like Galicia. So, it didn’t start out very awesome.

However, beginning in the 1990s, Mencía experienced what may be called a significant rebirth. Winemakers started focusing on old vines, many of them 50 years old or more, and lowering yields so they grew fewer grapes to concentrate flavors and produce higher-quality and more complex wines.They also started to move away from heavy oaking and extraction and move towards more elegant wines.

The Bierzo DO, DO is the legal designation for wines in Spain, but Bierzo is kind of the Mecca for Mencía, where the best Mencía is supposed to come from, and where both of our wines are from that we are drinking today. Other key regions that are noted for Mencía are Ribeira Sacra, where it is the most planted red grape, Valdeorras, Monterey, and Liébana.

Interestingly, there is very little Mencía grown outside of Spain. There is some being grown in Australia, and a little in Lodi California and in Oregon, but it is really hard to find otherwise.

Like Pinot Noir, Mencía is considered a difficult, finicky grape that is susceptible to diseases, and really prefers cooler temperatures. It also has a long growing season, so it needs steady cool temperatures over a long period of time. And, because it can grow so vigorously, it needs careful attention in the vineyard. So, it is a bit of a pain in the booty.

Today, those who know it consider it to be a high quality wine, said to have great fruitiness and balance, and the ability to age for a long time - 20-30 years. And, it is generally a relatively reasonably priced wine, in the $15-$30 range, so perfect for our show.

But that’s enough information. I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today. Whaddya say?


Mencía Wines We Chose for This Episode 25:17

As usual,  the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $25, and they should be relatively easy to find because I bought them at wine.com. Mencía is not going to be a super easy wine to find because it is made almost exclusively in Spain. So, you’ll need to go to your local wine store and ask them to find it for you, or look for a store that carries a good selection of Spanish wine. 

The first wine we are going to drink is the 2021 Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía. It has received a 92 from Wine Enthusiast, and, you are not going to believe this Carmela, 90 from James Suckling.

This wine is from Bierzo, and is made in the estate vineyards of the winery. The grapes are harvested by hand and are sorted in both the vineyard and the cellar, and then they are fermented in stainless steel tanks. There was so much varied information online about this wine, but as best as I can tell, they aged the wine for 12-18 months in American oak and in the bottle. So much more oaking than I would have expected, but not as much precision in the information as I would have liked.

The winery claims that the Bierzo region has been making wine going all the way back to the Greeks and Phoenicians, through the Roman Empire, and to today. The winery also claims to have a long history in the wine business and the Bierzo region, even claiming that the wife has connections to nobility in the region. 

The next wine we are going to drink is the 2019 Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía. It also comes from the Bierzo DO, and one source we found noted that this is a wine that is meant to be approachable and easy to drink, and drunk young. So, we’ll see what we think because this is a 2019 so I am wondering how much freshness or fruit it has left. 

I will also say the information about this wine was sort of all over the place, so this is what I was able to piece together with some confidence.

The winery says this: “This is our youngest wine. Produced from the Mencía grape variety sourced from old vines between 30 and 40 years old, carefully selected from the coolest areas, aiming to create a youthful, fruity wine that showcases the variety and the terroir at its finest essence. Traditional winemaking highlighting the fruity and fresh sensations typical of the varietal.” 

The wine is grown in clay soils across three vineyards, hand harvested, destemmed and lightly crushed, fermented in stainless steel tanks with indigenous yeasts with periodic pumpovers, and it goes through a second fermentation in new French oak. It then  spends 4 months in new French oak barrels for aging before bottling. So, again some oak, but not for a ton of time. 

One website said that, although they do not have an official certification, the winery follows sustainable and organic practices. This also looks to be a fairly young winery, founded in 2005. I could not find any professional ratings for this vintage, but there have been some for other vintages.

But, I think that is enough information - let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us to get some participation points, which you can trade-in for free stickers. You just need to send me an email with your mailing address, and I will get those “I drink with The Wine Pair Podcast” stickers over to you!


LINKS TO SOURCES FOR THESE SPECIFIC WINES


2021 Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía, 2019 Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía Wine Tasting, Pairing, and Review 29:32

Wine: Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. We may be compensated if you purchase)
Region: Spain, Bierzo
Year: 2021
Price: $14.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 14.5%
Grapes: Mencía
Professional Rating: WE 92, JS 90 Vivino 3.5

What we tasted and smelled in this Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía: 

  • Color: Very pretty, ruby burgundy red with purple edges
  • On the nose: Very fruity, dark cherry, fresh cherry juice, sweet tobacco, dark red fruits, raspberry, wood, black pepper, gunsmoke
  • In the mouth: Tart in the mouth, smells sweeter than it tastes, red plum skins, very tannic, black tea, some spice, a bit one note, salt, might be a little young


Food to pair with this Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía: Needs food, meaty pizza, salty foods, Greek salad, salty cheeses, tailgate wine
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, with no half points, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 6/10
  • Carmela: 6/10


Wine: Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía
Region: Spain, Bierzo
Year: 2019
Price: $21.98
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 13.8%
Grapes: Mencía
Professional Rating: Vivino 3.7

What we tasted and smelled in this Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía: 

  • Color: Purple
  • On the nose: Not a strong corked smell, but some concrete basement smell, no fruit, almost no smell at all
  • In the mouth: No taste, corked


Food to pair with this Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía: Corked

Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: No rating - corked
  • Carmela: No rating - corked


Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

  • Carmela: Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía
  • Joe: Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía



Taste profiles expected from Mencía  43:00

  • General 
    • Red and Black Fruits: blackberry, raspberry, tart cherry, strawberry, red currant, plum, and blackcurrant. 
    • Delicate floral scents, such as violets, are common. 
    • Notes of black pepper, mint, thyme, and licorice
    • Often exhibit earthy, vegetal, and stone-like mineral characteristics
    • High acid, medium tannins, and medium body
  • Vinos de Arganza Lagar de Robla Premium Mencía
    • WE: This deep-ruby-colored wine has aromas of purple plum, ripe summer cherry and a soft whiff of green bell pepper. Flavors of pomegranate, blackberry, milk chocolate, fennel pollen and black-olive paste are wrapped in a layer of silky tannins that linger on the palate.
    • JS: Baked blue and black fruit with some balsamic, violet-essence and hot-stones character. Medium body with creamy tannins and light berries and herbs on the palate. Unadorned and concise.
  • Losada El Pájaro Rojo Mencía
    • Winery: Delicate notes of violets and red fruits. On the palate, it is rich, unctuous, fresh, and velvety. A young wine that exemplifies diversity and terroir to the fullest. 
    • Dis & Dis: Its full-bodied palate and medium tannins offer nuanced notes of blackberry, cherry, and spice. Enjoy this excellent Mencía red wine at any dinner party or wine-tasting occasion.

What is your verdict on Mencía? 45:10
We need to give it another shot. Based on this tasting we just don’t think we got the real experience of the wine.

Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 46:33
Ok, so, Carmela, it’s time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast app - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com and you can join our email newsletter there - and if you missed our latest newsletter, email me and I will send it to you. You can do that by reaching out at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com. And tell us some things you want to hear us do, or not hear us do!

Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.


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