2015 Dominio do Bibei Ribeira Sacra Lacima

Community Tasting Notes (2) Avg Score: 89.5 points

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  3/31/2024 - Harrie Likes this wine: 90 Points

  This is fun to drink now.
  Still a cool wine with a bit of an austere personality. Bright, translucent red. Mildly sour cherries, having lost their aggressive bite. Mid long on the palate. Will be a joy with food (which I omitted). A good few years of life left. Nice.

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  12/30/2020 - forceberry wrote: 89 Points

  A blend of old-vine Mencía (75%), Brancellao (25%), Mouratón (3%) and Sousón (2%), all fruit destemmed. Fermented in 500-liter open-top oak casks. Aged in used barriques for 17 months, followed by another 5 months in tronconic vats. Total production 3786 bottles.
  
  Luminous, moderately translucent ruby red color. Dark-toned and moderately sweetish nose with aromas of ripe, plummy fruit, some toasty oak spice, a little bit of chocolatey oak, light licorice tones, fruity hints of blueberries and boysenberries and a touch of cacao nibs. The wine is ripe, silky and quite dark-toned on the palate with a rather full body and quite intense flavors of sweet-toned dark plums, some phenolic bitterness, a little bit of toasty cocoa oak, light crunchy notes of cranberries, a ferrous hint of blood and a touch of savory oak spice. Although the wine feels quite weighty and concentrated for a Ribeira Sacra, its high acidity manages to keep the wine pretty fresh and lively while the somewhat grippy medium tannins lend good firmness to the palate. The finish is spicy, somewhat grippy and slightly bitter with a quite lengthy aftertaste of peppery spice, savor wood tones, some ripe dark berries, a little bit of toasty cocoa oak, light rusty notes of blood, a tart hint of lingonberry and a touch of red plums.
  
  In our tasting of Ribeira Sacra wines, the Lacima wines were noticeably weightier, more concentrated and somewhat more oaky than all the other wines we tasted (Guimaro, Fedellos do Couto, Algueira). However, they retained good sense of balance and freshness, despite their somewhat different nature, somewhat indicative of more heavy-handed winemaking. We tasted Lacima 2015 and 2016 side-by-side and while the two wines were quite similar in style with their ripe fruit and somewhat obvious, toasty oak character, the 2016 was much more enjoyable with its somewhat fresher, red-toned fruit, while this 2015 felt a bit bulkier and softer with its slightly sweeter, more darker-toned fruit character. If 2016 was about berries, this 2015 is about dark fruits. Although Lacima is supposed to be from the upper tier of Bibei wines, I wasn't that impressed; I enjoyed more the lighter, more precise and delicate style of Ribeira Sacra over this more Bierzo-ish style. Nevertheless, good value at 31€. Most likely the wine will continue to improve for at least a handful of years and keep for much longer.
  
  EDIT: And, as the user fingers pointed out, this was my TN #11111. Whee!

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