2021 Zuccardi Malbec Finca Piedra Infinita Gravascal Paraje Altamira Valle de Uco 750 ml

It’s one thing to call a Malbec one of the best wines in the world. 

It’s another to call it one of the finest you’ll ever experience. 

This is both.

The2021 Malbec Finca Piedra Infinita Gravascal stands with the global crème de la crème, like Peter Sisseck’s Pingus ($1,282), Colgin’s Tychson Hill Cab ($708), and Dalla Valle’s Maya ($627).  

“The palate combines a weightless buoyancy and deft concentration with a pronounced yet restrained mineral-laden core, culminating in a slow-moving, balanced and symmetrical finish with dramatic length,” waxed WA’s Matthew Luczy. “I cannot wait to follow this wine in the cellar, and I suspect it has a solid two decades of development ahead.”

This is a bottle that will add a depth to your cellar like the finest vintages of First Growth Bordeaux—it brings intrigue and importance along with its impeccable, unimprovable quality. For anyone who reveres wine for the endless fascination it inspires, this is a must-have bottle. 

Third-generation winemaker Sebastián Zuccardi is a man possessed, as many Wine Access members know from scores of past bestselling Zuccardi offers. He’s at the forefront of a renegade crew of winemakers who are eschewing intrusive new oak in pursuit of transparent, site-specific wines that convey the Uco Valley’s Andean terroir. But no one else quite takes it to the lengths he does. 

This wine hails from the Finca Piedra Infinita vineyard, which sits among snow-capped mountains at 3,609 feet of elevation and required over a thousand truckloads to remove its stones before it could be planted. The 104-acre site comprises 46 tiny plots, and Gravascal comes from a tiny portion—not even two acres—on its northeast side, an alluvial terroir with limestone-covered rocks beginning 60cm below the surface. 

In a cool vintage like 2021, Zuccardi’s Malbec fruit had ample time to reach maturity with a perfect balance of sugar and acidity and a strong tannic structure. The grapes were harvested by hand, fermented as whole clusters on native yeasts. Sebastián aged the wine for a year in unlined concrete tanks—that use of concrete in pursuit of Malbec purity is the winemaker’s hallmark.