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Wine Review Online |
The 2021 Mencía-based releases from Luna Beberide are smashingly good and dangerously delicious even in their youth, without seeming "played out" or "dumbed down." This wine fits that description perfectly, and is among the best releases of “Art” yet to be issued by the bodega, and surely the fastest out of the starting blocks for sheer enjoyability. Sourced from low-yielding vines averaging around 75 years of age, this emits a lot of aroma and flavor for its weight, which is really just medium-bodied and notably lighter than some previous vintages of this wine. A lighter, fresher style has also marked the top-of-line “Paixar” release (one click up from this bottling) during the past couple of vintages, making the change seem deliberate. I don’t particular favor or disfavor the seemingly new style, as these 2021s are indisputably outstanding. (Still, anyone who has ever tasted Paixar from 2001 or 2004, for example, will share my ambivalence.) Under Bierzo’s new classification system, this (like the Finca Luna Beberide bottling from 2021) is a “Vino de Paraje” from the Valdetruchas site in the village of Villafranca del Bierzo. I will publish a lengthy column before long outlining this new classification system within the Bierzo D.O., which is very interesting and helpful, but requires some explanation. Before that column appears, and within it, and also after it, I’ll also publish a whole slew of reviews from an intensive tasting trip from March of this year. But to return to this wonderful wine, it shows more spice and overall complexity from a slightly stronger dose of oak aging than the Finca Luna Beberide release from this vintage, but not enough to lead almost anyone to characterize it as “oaky,” as the old-vine fruit easily outruns the wood notes all the way through the finish, with not one particle of wood tannin outlasting the fruit flavors or grape tannins. Although ripe and soft in flavor and texture, it is still adequately structured, and even at this tender age, the wine is so well integrated that one doesn’t really experience the fruit, acidity, oak or tannin as distinct elements, but rather as interwoven strands of a multicolored garment. This will seem a little light for $65 wine to some consumers, but those same consumers would probably consider a similarly styled but less complex Volnay from Burgundy a little light for $130. Take your pick.
Michael Franz – Oct 10, 2023. |
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View from the Cellar |
This is the top of the line bottling from one of my absolutely favorite producers in Bierzo, Luna Beberide. The wine is made entirely of Mencía, with the vineyards now eighty years of age, planted on clay and weathered slate topsoils over a hard foundation of slate subsoil. The wine is aged for one year in a combination of foudres and five hundred liter French oak puncheons. The 2021 Art comes in at 13.5 percent alcohol and offers up an absolutely stunning bouquet of dark berries, pomegranate, graphite, dark, stony soil tones, espresso, woodsmoke, a touch of tree bark and a beautiful topnote of gentle, sweet botanicals. On the palate the wine is deep, pure and full- bodied, with a superb core of fruit, fine mineral undertow and grip, fine-grained, ripe tannins and outstanding focus and balance on the long, complex and seamless finish. This is so beautifully balanced that it is drinkable out of the blocks, but it is still very much in its primary stage of development and truly deserves some time in the cellar to allow its secondary layers of complexity to fully emerge. It is a superb bottle of old vine Bierzo Mencía! 2032-2075+.
John Gilman, January - February 2024 |
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The Wine Advocate |
The 2021 Art from Luna Beberide was produced with grapes from a single vineyard, La Recuperada, that is in the process of being certified organic. It fermented in stainless steel and matured in 500-liter oak barrels for 12 months. It's floral, perfumed and elegant, with the freshness of the 700 to 900 meters above sea level where the vineyards grow. It reveals fine-grained tannins and medium ripeness at 13.5% alcohol. 6,500 bottles were filled in May 2023. The Luna Beberide family has been producing modern Bierzo wines since 1988. They work over 50 hectares of vineyards and bottle around 150,000 bottles per year. Paixar was one of the first icons from Bierzo.
Luis Gutierrez – The Wine Advocate August 10, 2023 |
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Luna Beberide Art