2018 Zuccardi Aluvional Malbec Gualtallary Valle de Uco Mendoza 750 ml

It would be tough to imagine Argentina’s modern-day renaissance without Sebastián Zuccardi—and impossible to find a greater example of his groundbreaking mission than his  2018 Aluvional Malbec.

The Zuccardi family was among the earliest pioneers to tap the stunning, high-altitude vineyards of Mendoza’s Uco Valley, and the third-generation family estate has been lauded to no end. The Wine Advocate called them “among the top wineries of the country,” and each year their enviable list of accolades and awards only grows longer. 

Obsessed with terroir, Sebastián created the Aluvional label to showcase unique terroirs of the Uco Valley and this highlights Gualtallary—one of the most breathtaking areas of the world to grow Malbec.

Gualtallary has become one Argentina’s most coveted locations to grow Malbec, with extremely high elevation and shallow soils stressing vines and producing small, concentrated berries and dramatically intense wines. In his hands, the result is a wine with generous fruit and spice, coupled with such structure and density of flavor that this extraordinary Malbec will mature beautifully over the next eight years.

We’ve come to bank on this kind of bold complexity from the estate that but this wine catapulted past our already high expectations. It demonstrates Sebastián’s unmatched talent for expressing Mendoza terroir: He’s meticulous in the vineyard, and eschews intrusive oak regimens in order to produce pure, site-specific Malbecs. “In the winery,” he told us. “We have to be very respectful of the work we did in the vineyard.”

In the case of this bottling, that means fermentation in concrete tanks with native yeasts before aging in a mixture of concrete tanks and large untoasted oak barrels, which both allow the wine to soften without introducing other flavors.