Luna Beberide Art, Bierzo Red 2017
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93
Wine Advocate
I found heady notes of violet pastille in the nose of the 2017 Art, which felt very young and undeveloped but seemed to have more fleshy fruit than the 2016 I tasted next to this, and the oak felt better integrated and less obvious here. It has a plump palate with glossy tannins and juicy fruit with acid berry freshness and tasty flavors. 13,000 bottles produced. Drink Date 2019 – 2024
Vivid ruby-red. Mineral- and smoke-accented red fruit liqueur and pot-pourri aromas are complemented by suggestions of cola, vanilla and candied licorice. Sweet, seamless and focused on the palate, offering intense black raspberry, cherry compote and spicecake flavors that become livelier with air. Shows impressive detail, depth and finishes on a repeating red fruit note, with smooth tannins and lingering florality. (Aged for a year in new French oak barrels.)
2017 Art bottling of Mencía from Luna Beberide is from even older vines than the Finca la Cuesta, as these vineyards are eighty to ninety years of age, planted at eight to nine hundred meters above sea level and on an almost pure base of slate, so this is much more Ribeira Sacra-like in its soil composition than most of the vineyards in Bierzo. The wine undergoes its malo in barrel and is raised in a combination of a few new French demi-muids and older two hundred and twenty-five liter barrels. It spends just over a year in cask prior to bottling. The 2017 Art is pretty ripe for this bottling, coming in at fourteen percent in this vintage and delivering a superb, old viney nose of sweet cassis, pomegranate, graphite, a beautiful base of slate minerality, cigar smoke, wild fennel, a touch of tree bark and a deft foundation of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, precise and full-bodied, with a great core of fruit, fine soil signature, ripe, suave tannins and excellent focus and grip on the long, polished and complex finish. This is more refined in personality than the Finca la Cuesta bottling, with the same fine depth, but more a more elegant personality. First class juice.
This excellent producer has turned in a wonderful performance with this wine in 2017, making a rich and generous rendition that displays the warmth of the growing season while still retaining the freshness that makes old vine, high-elevation Mencía so exciting. Deeply pigmented and medium-plus in body, this has already soaked up almost all the overtly oaky notes from its upbringing, with only some lovely spice notes showing at this point, accenting the black cherry and red berry fruit (plus the lightest touch of wood tannin providing just a bit of extra grip in the finish). Sip after sip, it shows virtually perfect balance between ripe fruit and bright acidity, and also between textural softness and structural spine for future development. My guess is that both 2016 and 2018 will ultimately be regarded as great vintages in Bierzo that will somewhat surpass 2017, but both will take longer to reveal all their charms, whereas this wine is already fantastic, and will surely get even better for another five years.
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