Antidoto Ribera del Duero '21

Located in the eastern part of the Castilla y León region, in northern Spain, Ribera del Duero has one of the most extreme continental climates in the country, making grapegrowing challenging. And some of its greatest terroirs and oldest vines are in Soria, a province in the remote eastern area of the region. Here, the French winemaker Bertrand Sourdais, along with David Hernando, who is from the area, founded Bodegas Antídoto, the name a reference to the Spanish word for “antidote.” They focus on vineyards that are more than 50 years old and that have ungrafted vines—the soils are sandy enough to have prevented the spread of phylloxera in the area for over a century—using organic and some biodynamic practices as well to make wines are an “antidote” to the more commercial style that has dominated Ribera del Duero.

Bertrand thinks of wines from the Soria subzone as balancing Rioja’s fragrance and finesse with Ribera del Duero’s traditional power and depth. For this wine, made from Tinto Fino (the local name for Tempranillo), fermentation was carried out with indigenous yeast and the maceration was long and gentle to minimize the extraction of tannins. The wine was aged in large French oak barrels for nine months (5% of them new).