2021 Malbec Terroir, Altos Las Hormigas, Luján de Cuyo
A brilliant contemporary Malbec from the pioneering and thoughtful Altos Las Hormigas. The winery was established in 1995 by two Italians, and in 2012 they worked with Pedro Parra to identify top sites for Malbec in the Mendoza area, and eschewed new oak for larger, older casks and concrete tanks for maturation. This, from the Terroir series, is focused on expressing the purity and elegance of a single site in Luján de Cuyo, the traditional place for Mendoza wine production. They harvest by hand, and use gravity to process the grapes into small concrete tanks where they are fermented with wild yeasts, and then spend 18 months before resting in bottle for six further months. It's a single parcel Malbec and has grippy, rounded tannins, minty, limestone freshness and layers of bramble fruit and crunchy red cherry.