César Márquez - ‘La Salvación’, Mencía, Bierzo, Spain (2021)

TASTING NOTES

The is a really special wine with a flinty reductive nose with white peach, dried  herbs, almond paste, gun smoke, green olives and lemon citrus. The acidity is nervy and saline and feels exceptionally mineral.

100 year old Godello vines from a one-hectare plot in Arganza, the northernmost and cooler village in Bierzo on a mixture of sand and clay soil. 

Manual harvest; destemmed, fermented in barrels and aged without bâtonnage for 11 months (including a short time under flor!). Bottled without filtering or stabilizing.

Cesar Marquez' family has been making wine in Bierzo for over two hundred years and the winery is co-owned with his mother, María Isabel, uncles José Daniel and Raúl Pérez (as in that Raúl Pérez), and cousin Arturo.

He concedes that it is not easy to be Pérez' nephew, one of Spain’s most reputed winemakers, but he has been a major influence. Márquez studied oenology in Requena (Valencia) and has since been forging his own path, making delicious, evocative and terroir driven wines.