Old vines, new gambles

This summer, the narrow streets of Villafranca were filled with throngs of sunburned and limping religious pilgrims. After hiking for months from homes across continental Europe, they trudged past Palacios' garage winery on their way to Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, where legend has it the bones of St. James are buried. Catholic priests and penitents have made the trek since the Moors were overthrown in the 10th century. Early pilgrims, eager to reinforce the church's claim to this corner of Christendom, planted the first grapevines here to ensure there would be wine in Bierzo for the sacraments.

Palacios likes to say that the religious lineage of these vineyards adds a touch of the divine to the wines. After his success in Priorat, he says, "when I see an old vine in a beautiful place, I know it will make good wine. It will take time to develop, but it's already there in the vine."

corie.brown@latimes.com

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Berries, cherries, spice and leather

The TIMES tasting panel met last week to assess red wines from Bierzo, a mountainous region in northwestern Spain where the Mencia grape is indigenous. There were several pleasant surprises among the nine wines we sampled. The best wines had attractive black cherry or blackberry and leather aromas, well-knit flavors of fresh, just-crushed berries, lively acids and firm tannins. They'd be great with roasted pork or a good steak.

The wines ranged in price from $10 to $40; most cost less than $20 per bottle.

But we also tasted one in a price category by itself. The 2004 Descendientes de J. Palacios, Villa Corullon, La Faraona -- sold by the Rare Wine Co. ( www.rarewineco.com) for $225 -- is the flagship wine for J. Palacios, a winery owned by Alvaro Palacios and his nephew Ricardo Perez. The grapes come from a steep-sloped vineyard with traditional bush-pruned vines that are at least 65 years old. J. Palacios' Villa Corullon from the La Faraona vineyard is a rich, elegant, complex wine that reveals the potential of the Mencia grape in Bierzo. The wine has black cherry, crushed berry, white pepper and herbal aromas, a lively acidity, layers of spicy, herbal and blueberry flavors and a lovely lingering finish.

The better wines in the tasting echoed these qualities, whereas the lesser wines were either too flat or tainted with off flavors indicative of the spoilage yeast brettanomyces. The eight wines, which were tasted blind, are listed in order of the panel's preference. Joining me on the panel were Food columnist Russ Parsons and assistant Food editor Betty Hallock.