| 96+ |
The Wine Advocate |
Since 2022, the regular Paixar produced since the turn of the century is now the 2023 Paixar Paraje A Serra. This is the second time it has carried the name from that lieu-dit (or "paraje") in the village of Dragonte on slate-rich soils. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel and matured in 500-liter French oak barrels for 12 months. This is a lot more reticent than the Viña de Vaca; it's subtler, serious and terribly elegant and balanced. It has contained ripeness and 13% alcohol, a pH of 3.36 and 5.16 grams of acidity. It's finer-boned, more elegant and precise. The mouthfeel is beautiful, with very fine tannins. The two wines are getting more differentiated, getting their own personality. 12,500 bottles produced. It was bottled in March 2024. 2026 – 2036.
Luis Gutierrez, The Wine Advocate Jul 10, 2025 |
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| 95 |
View from the Cellar |
This is the first vintage that I can recall that the Paixar old vine bottling from Luna Beberide
has been broken down into two distinct single vineyard wines. The A Serra bottling hails from
Mencía vines that are eighty to one hundred years of age, planted on steep, crumbling slate
vineyards. The wine was aged for one year in “one wine” five hundred liter casks and offers up a
deep, pure and complex bouquet of cassis, dark berries, espresso, a lovely touch of Mencía
botanicals, a superb base of slate minerality, a touch of licorice and a discreet framing of cedary
oak. On the palate the wine is deep, young and full-bodied, with tangy acids, ripe tannins, a superb core of fruit, excellent transparency down to the soil, fine focus and grip and a long, complex and impeccably balanced finish. This is a puppy and is going to demand some cellaring time, but in due course, it is going to be a stunning bottle of wine! 2035-2075+.
John Gilman, Issue 117, May– June 2025 |
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| 94 |
Wine Review Online |
“Excuse me for repeating myself, but this new wine calls for the same introduction as its stablemate “Viña de Vaca” wine: This is one of two new renditions of “Paixar,” one of the top wines of Bierzo (and all of Spain, for that matter, stretching back to the inaugural vintage of 2001. I have tasted almost every vintage (probably all of them, but leaving room for error). As noted in my review of the Viña de Vaca bottling, this is a bit less physically dense than some noteworthy versions of Paixar (such as the 2001 and 2004), but in this instance the difference is less notable. Both are from plots in Dragonte, Corullón, but this is the richer of the two, straddling the line between medium- and full-bodied, with a riper profile that consequently also shows less assertive acidity. It also displays darker fruit tones, without the red cherry and red raspberry notes I found beneath the predominant Bing cherry fruit of the Viña de Vaca. Although this is the marginally more powerful of the two wines, I’m not sure it will be any longer lived, as the acidity of the Viña de Vaca will likely enable it to ride gracefully into a sunset that is rather far distant. If I owned these wines rather than working with single bottles as review samples, I’d probably crack into this one a bit earlier to enjoy its somewhat more plush presentation, but I’d surely hold some of these back, as it is a matter of guesswork as to how they will develop over time”.
Michael Franz, May 29,2025 |
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Paixar A Serra