2013 Descendientes de José Palacios Bierzo Corullon Moncerbal

eRobertParker.com #224 Apr 2016
Luis Gutierrez
95
Each year it's a fight between Moncerbal and Las Lamas, and it's usually the former that is better. The 2013 Moncerbal, the stonier and more extreme vineyard, was quite open, even a little forward with ripe cherries, exuberant, a little lactic with some savory aromas (Marmite?). The palate is medium to full-bodied, with fine minerality, with a much better palate than nose. In fact, the nose was quite chameleon-like - it kept changing for a good couple of hours I had it in the glass, sometimes showing more forward, and then closing down and feeling more austere and backward. I have no doubt this will evolve nicely in bottle. 2,160 bottles produced. The reds from Descendientes de José Palacios are always a field blend of old vineyards where Mencía dominates, but there's always a small percentage of other grapes, even some whites. 2013 and 2014 are quite similar vintages, cool years that will evolve slowly. 2013 was a typical cool year of the Bierzo, rainy and fresh (similar to 2006 and 2007), with a very difficult harvest, where sorting was key (they hadn't used the sorting table for four years); the wines have developed much better than expected. These are wines of finesse, a notch below 2012, perhaps not as complete. They are currently building a new winery between their Moncerbal and Las Lamas vineyards (in the quarter Chao do Pando of the village of Corullón), designed by Rafael Moneo, where they hope to vinify the 2017 vintage. There will be four stories, all by gravity, buried in the hill, with natural temperature (70% of the winery will be underground) and humidity. I tasted all of the vintages of Pétalos del Bierzo since the initial 2003 and none of them were over the hill, although their peak seemed to be at around 8-10 years after the vintage. The 2003 was quite surprising, as it didn't show any heat and showed developed aromas closer to a northern Rhône than a Burgundy. Other than 2003, some of my favorite vintages were 2006, 2010 and 2012. In 2003 they did even longer macerations, thinking about a wine to keep, but later they started with shorter macerations in search of a more drinkable wine.