La Hormiga de Antídoto 2020

Attractive nose with dark cherries, roasted spices and dried herbs and touches of dark chocolate and coffee. Still quite fresh and bright on the palate, with medium to full body, delivering a firm backbone of fresh, polished tannins. Long, juicy finish with fine, savory herbs. Drink after 2023.

The 2020 La Hormiga is from an unusual and exceptional year that produced some wines with a lot less alcohol, yet this is still 14.48%. From old vines planted on red soils at 950 meters in altitude, the grapes were harvested between the 1st and 9th of October, and the wine matured in 54% new French barriques for 12 months. The wine is marked by the élevage in barrels and shows abundant smoky, spicy and toasty notes; after this vintage, they realized they needed to lower the amount of new barrels in this wine. The wine is powerful and concentrated and reveals abundant tannins that make it a bit hard. Give it some more time in bottle. 31,200 bottles and 525 magnums produced. It was bottled in March 2022.