We are currently working with one cuvee from this quality outfit, the super-value "Baltos", a 100% old-vine Mencía (forty years old) which is aged for six months in barriques. Having achieved "Top 100" status with the inaugural 2001 bottling, the current incarnation is a more mature and naturally assured offering. The vines are located in Cabanelas near the village of Valtuille de Abajo, whose smooth hillsides face south at an altitude of 500 metres above sea level and where clay and calcareous soils with small fragments of ferric slates produce extremely low yields. The current release (2009) is an excellent, potent and individual Bierzo that revels in a nose of earth, mineral, pencil lead, and red and black cherry. The palate is ripe, balanced, spicy, and wonderfully textured. This is an intriguing counterpoint to our other Mencia from Valdesil. This is a more powerful and concentrated style, although no less compelling. In fact, in this wine, it's is easy to see why Mencia was once thought to be an ancient clone of Cabernet Franc (an impression which has been dispelled with DNA profiling); its density, structure and blue fruit/pencil shaving aromas evokes something of a fine right bank Bordeaux.