Bodegas y Viñedos Paixar

Half a kilogram from a vine

The sorting begins with Mencía from high slate slopes. Alejandro Luna Berberide, winemaker at Bodegas y Viñedos Paixar in Villafranca Del Bierzo, works inside a project built to make one wine and no others. Paixar began in 2001 in the Dragonte highlands, outside Villafranca del Bierzo, with Luna Berberide as one of its founding hands and with vinification tied to the Luna Berberide winery. The name comes from a local word for highlands, which is less romance than instruction: the vineyard sits between 700 and 900 meters above sea level, among oak and chestnut trees, where old Mencía vines hold to slate.

Luna Berberide’s wider work is family-winery leadership at Bodegas Luna Beberide, where continuity, vineyard decisions, and cellar restraint shape the house. Paixar narrows that discipline further. The project draws from about 5 hectares of very old, low-yielding vines, planted in tight frames and farmed with sustainable intent. The fruit is not asked to carry a range. It is asked to carry Paixar Mencía.

A single wine from slate

The method follows the vineyard before it follows the cellar. Planting frames are no larger than 1.20 m x 1.20 m, a close-set pattern that belongs to poor mountain ground and vines that have had time on the tools. Average vine age is given at 80 years, with some plots over 100 years old. Yield is held to no more than half a kilogram per vine. That figure explains much of the wine before the first pump-over begins.

After harvest, the grapes go to the Luna Berberide winery for selection on the table, cold maceration, fermentation with indigenous yeasts, and daily pumping-over during fermentation. Aging does not follow a fixed formula; barrel time and vessel choice answer the vintage and the origin of the fruit. The wine is aged in new French oak barrels for approximately 22 months, then released as the project’s sole expression, a still red from the Bierzo D.O. made from Mencía. Production stays small, around 6,000 bottles annually, and the scale is part of the discipline rather than a scarcity line.

The cellar below Villafranca

The place has the quiet of a mountain wine project rather than a public stage. The vineyard is steep, slate underfoot, with the vines broken into small holdings between trees; the work begins there, in the decision to keep old plants producing little fruit. The cellar work moves between the practical brightness of the Luna Berberide facility and the underground cellar in Villafranca del Bierzo, where barrel aging benefits from a cool, stable room below the town.

In the glass, the house describes Paixar through old vines, floral and fruity notes, and a touch of dark chocolate from barrel aging. Luna Berberide has stated the broader philosophy plainly: “The philosophy of our house is based on simplicity and quality.” At Paixar, that sentence has a narrow job. It must hold a whole project to one Mencía, one highland vineyard, and one name: Paixar.