2021 Raul Perez - Ultreia Saint Jacques

The biggest volume of the winery is the 2021 Ultreia Saint Jacques, which represents some 170,000 bottles, and according to Raúl Pérez, it's the most difficult wine to make here. They now work a lot to produce this wine, a blend of 11 wines selected from the 17 they made. It's a wine that represents Bierzo and is from a year when they used more grapes from sandy soils. It has 13.16% alcohol and a pH of 3.66; it's serious and restrained but juicy and easy to drink. Seventy percent of the wine matured in barrel and the rest in troncoconic oak vats.

The 2021 Ultreia Saint Jaques combines Mencía with small amounts of Trousseau and Tintorera from a vineyard planted in 1936. It's sanguine with pomegranate and cherry notes, offering hints of vibrant fruit, wood, crushed leaves and white pepper. Fermented with whole clusters and aged in older barrels, the 2021 is dry, with fine, active tannins, flowing agilely and leaving a lasting impression.