Raul Perez is the winemaker who dragged Bierzo out of obscurity and made Mencia a grape people argue about. La Vizcaina is his home-turf project around Valtuille de Abajo, working the old parcels of slate and clay in the hills of northwest Spain, where the vines are frequently ancient and the plots are tiny. La Poulosa is one of the single-site bottlings, and like the rest of the range it goes light on extraction and heavy on site expression. Mencia at its best sits somewhere between Cru Beaujolais and the Northern Rhone: floral, peppery, medium-bodied and mineral rather than big. Bierzo remains one of the best value propositions in serious European red wine.