Alice Feiring’s colourful quote above was penned towards the start of Grégory Pérez’s Bierzo adventure. We’re now two decades into his Mengoba project and can edit that acclaim to say, as well as a flipping talented winegrower. A Bordeaux native with Spanish heritage, Pérez launched his career with Grand-Puy-Lacoste and worked at Cos d’Estournel before travelling to Bierzo in 2001. Initially expecting to perform a single harvest with his friend Eduardo García, today, Pérez is one of the leading lights of this remote mountainous region of northwest Spain—and perhaps its most daredevil. By all accounts, 2023 is Bierzo’s finest vintage in a decade, and one of the finest since the region’s modern-day Mencía pioneers—Álvaro Palacios and the Pérez namesakes, Ricardo, Raul and Grégory— arrived a quarter of a century ago. The Mencía wines from these highlands harness more body than their Atlantic-influenced cousins on the opposite side of the Cantabrian mountains and Galician Massif. Even so, the 2023 vintage has shaped delicious wines of surprising elegance, perfume and supple texture. One grower we spoke to yearned that 2023 could be Bierzo’s answer to Beaujolais’ 2009 vintage, referring to the year that relaunched Cru Beaujolais to the modern palate. Perhaps he had been drinking too much of his own wares at the time; one can become hopeful in a bar, after hours. But we get the point. The best wines of Bierzo deserve more limelight than the congested global market currently grants them. Pound for pound, the region represents some of the best value coming out of Europe. Indeed, visiting Pérez and his isolated hillside vineyards, where everything is done by hand and tractor, it seems like a minor miracle that he can produce such quality at a similar price to mechanised Beaujolais plonk. Or the cost of a few pints of beer, for that matter. Even if the 2023 vintage does not launch his Mencía onto the great wine lists, perhaps our optimistic friend above might console himself that Bierzo has what Beaujolais does not: great white wines. Bierzo’s Godello-based wines have long been an insider’s secret. Given that five per cent of Bierzo’s vineyards are planted to white grapes, that isn’t going to change any time soon. Yet, few wine regions in Europe can create such brilliant and identifiable whites: imagine a quality, punchy Chardonnay flecked with meadow flowers and mineral depth from old, hand-tended vines—at an affordable price.