The just-bottled 2019 El Castro de Valtuille Mencía Joven is perfectly relaxed, aromatic and open, a preview of what the 2019s are going to be like, a very good vintage, without reaching the heights of 2018, which has been one of the finest vintages in the recent history of Bierzo. It has perhaps a little more tannin than 2018 and is a little more rustic. There will be some 100,000 bottles of this, as they do 15,000-bottle lots, and I tasted a bottle from the first lot bottled in May 2020.