The 2019 Finca Canal Uco comes from the historical part of Altamira only across the street from their Piedra Infinita vineyard, where the soils are slightly deeper and with a little less limestone and the grapes achieve more ripeness and deliver slightly more generous wines. They planted this vineyard 12 years ago—it was previously planted to apple trees. They have subdivided this 50-hectare vineyard into 40 different plots. The soils are heterogeneous, and they don't use the stonier soil and also avoid the deeper soils; so, they do a selection, ferment with some stems by plot and then do the blend of some 15 different parts of the vineyard. In Sebastian Zuccardi's words, they deconstruct the vineyard and then build the wines from the block. This has a combination of the characteristics that are juicier and make you salivate and the limestone, trying to take the best from both worlds. It has some flowers and also iron and blood and is medium to full-bodied, with good ripeness and the house style of seriousness, balance and elegance within the natural power and intensity of the place. This also matured exclusively in concrete without epoxy coating, raw concrete. 11,900 bottles were filled in June 2020.

Herby notes on the nose, as well as black fruit and reductive drainage notes. A bit of an ugly duckling at this stage. Tart tannins. Reminds me of southern Italian styles. Somewhat unforgiving. (RH)