Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
From Mencia, Alicante Bouschet, and Jerez grown in clay soils, the opposite of the Moncerbal, the 2024 Las Lamas is round, explosive, slatey, and lengthy. It has impressive texture and grip, with a slightly reductive quality while still in barrel. There’s grip and intensity, but so much brightness in the black fruit and peppery spice of the wine, buoyant in underlying acidity. This will be a blockbuster wine on release. Founded in 1999 by Alvaro Palacios and his nephew Ricardo Perez Palacios, this producer is all about showing off the bedrock, metamorphic, and slate soils in Bierzo, using it as a canvas for the different profiles of Mencia. They farm vineyards that are 130 years old and at high elevation, many interplanted with whites like Palomino.
Critic scores
Average Score
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
The sample of the 2024 Las Lamas was very fine, even sharp, here the effect of the year. It comes from the seven plots they own that were made into a single vineyard in 2017, 1.6 hectares in Corullón. It's 94% Mencía and 3% each Alicante Bouschet and Jerez, fermented with partially destemmed grapes in oak vats with a maceration time of 40 days. It finished with 13.5% alcohol and a pH of 3.75. As I wrote in the note for the 2024 Moncerbal, 2024 is a vintage where Moncerbal is more Las Lamas and Las Lamas is more Moncerbal. Meaning that this wine has a lot of finesse and is crystalline and pure. This could be one of those (rare) years when I like Las Lamas more than Moncerbal. Today I prefer it. But it's still too early. The answer, next year...