A History of the Mencía Grape

The History of the Mencía Grape

Mitchell Rabinowitz

There’s a story you still hear about Mencía. It says the grape was brought north by pilgrims, planted by monks along the Camino de Santiago, and that its real identity is Cabernet Franc in disguise. For years, the theory circulated in wine guides and importer blurbs, repeated as a kind of placeholder. Even now, after genetic testing has confirmed that Mencía is native to the Iberian Peninsula and genetically identical to Jaen do Dão in Portugal, the French origin myth lingers. It persists not because it is true, but because it gives the grape a familiar frame. The real story does not offer that kind of shorthand. It is slower, local, and harder to simplify. Mencía did not come with settlers or traders. It was already growing in the northwest, and it continued to be grown there because it worked.

The grape grows in Bierzo, Ribeira Sacra, Valdeorras, and neighboring corners of Galicia and León. The terrain in these places makes the vineyard layout irregular. Vines are planted based on slope, access, and habit, not grid or system. In Ribeira Sacra, many vineyards descend sharply toward the Sil and Miño Rivers. The steepest parcels are terraced and still worked entirely by hand. Tractors are useless here. Many of the vines are trained without wires, pruned into small, low-standing bushes. This method, called head training, involves a central trunk with short arms and no trellising. It is an old system that makes sense on hillsides where nothing mechanical fits. Pruning, canopy management, and harvest must all be done manually.

Mencía buds early and ripens early. The grape is compact and sensitive to rot, especially in humid years. But when grown on poor soils with good drainage, it can ripen evenly and retain acidity. The wines are usually red-fruited, with flavors of cherry, redcurrant, and sometimes cranberry. But they are not soft. Tannins are moderate. Structure comes from acidity and from fruit that holds its shape without leaning into sweetness. The finish is firm, with mineral edges, and does not swell or soften as it fades.

For most of its history, Mencía was made simply. Fermentation took place without added yeast, using the native microbiota already present on the fruit and in the cellar. The wines were aged in whatever vessels were available, mostly old chestnut barrels or cement tanks. These did not add flavor, but they reflected what the cellar had on hand. The wine was held in large vessels after fermentation, such as cement tanks or old wooden casks. These were not used for long-term aging, but simply to let the wine rest before it was consumed or sold locally. Bottling was rare. Consistency was not a goal. The grape endured because it was already part of the system.

By the mid-20th century, that system had been displaced. Phylloxera, rural depopulation, and industrial winemaking changed the shape of production. Terraces were abandoned. New plantings went to flatter ground. Cooperatives dominated Bierzo by the 1960s. Fermentation became centralized. Wine was corrected, filtered, and shipped in volume. Mencía remained the grape of record, but the wine no longer expressed anything specific. It had become red wine from the northwest.

The change began when a few growers returned to the parcels others had left behind. In Bierzo, Raúl Pérez walked old vineyards that had not been touched in years. The vines were still alive. The soils had not been stripped. He picked early, fermented with stems when possible, and used vessels that did not mark the wine. Wines like Ultreia, La Vizcaína, and El Rapolao were not made to represent Mencía as a concept. They were shaped by the conditions of each site.

In Ribeira Sacra, Laura Lorenzo worked parcels that were steeper and less consistent. Her vineyards contained mixtures of red and white grapes, often with no clear varietal boundaries. She harvested what was there. Fermented without additions. Aged in used barrels or clay. Her wines were not polished, but they reflected the mix of grapes, soils, and exposures as they were found in each vineyard. Mencía was not highlighted. It was integrated.

Other growers such as Pedro Rodríguez at Guímaro, Verónica Ortega, and Diego Losada followed similar lines of thinking. They did not try to fix the grape. They tried to understand what the grape had preserved. Their methods were not identical, but their approach was consistent. They adjusted what they did based on what the vineyard gave them, not on a fixed recipe. Each vintage was handled as its own situation. The wines that emerged were not shaped by weight or flourish. They held together because nothing was forced. Acidity carried the frame. The fruit stayed in proportion. There was no need to lift or stretch the wine. It moved with quiet coherence, from start to finish, without ever needing to announce itself.

Today, the best examples of Mencía are defined by proportion. Acidity shapes the structure. Fruit is concentrated but does not dominate. Alcohol levels are moderate. Tannins frame the wine without tightening it. The aromatics echo the fruit but do not float above it. Everything stays connected. When made from old vines on sloped, low-yielding sites, these wines do not expand or swell. They remain focused and exact. What gives them tension is not extraction, but restraint.

This is not a story of rediscovery. It is a story of continuity interrupted and then resumed. The vines were never pulled out. The terraces were not erased. The winemaking was not replaced. It was bypassed. The growers who matter now are the ones who stayed with the vines long enough to see what they still had to say. Mencía does not require interpretation. It requires patience.

And when you walk the slope, prune the vine, pick before the sugars climb too far, and stay out of the wine’s way, what you are left with is not a version of Cabernet Franc. It is not a comeback story. It is the taste of a place that never stopped making sense.