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

Sebastián Zuccardi’s exquisitely precise, fine-boned, elegant 2021 Finca Piedra Infinita is more than the pinnacle of Malbec. It’s one of the most breathtaking wines you’ll ever experience.

“Just fabulous” is how Vinous summed it up. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, in their 99-point review, called it “commanding, complex, and ceaselessly evolving.” Few wines lauded on this level can also be considered a great value, but this is one. It stands with some of the true icons of the world: $600–800 Cabernets from Colgin and Realm, Vega Siclia, and other icons  

Finca Piedra Infinita hails from an improbable single vineyard that required over a thousand truckloads to remove its stones before it could be planted. It was grown among snow-capped mountains at 3,609 feet in elevation, fermented and matured chiefly in cement vats for maximum purity. The audacity of the achievement is nearly without peer.

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. His Finca Piedra Infinita hails from a single vineyard of 46 tiny plots which Sebastian deconstructs, reassembling a small selection of components into a showstopping blend of mineral purity and tension.

In a cool vintage like 2021, Sebastián pulls from the shallowest soils where he can count on faster ripening, only using plots with a sandy loam layer between 20 and 60 cm of thickness. This layer sits above granite rocks covered with calcium carbonate. Critics have compared this cuvée’s texture to “liquid chalk.”

Fermented with between 80% to 100% whole cluster, seeing very little oak influence, Sebastian has given himself and this release nowhere to hide. It’s a wine stark in its beauty, like the mountains themselves—a “world-class expression,” as critic Tim Atkin has said about this bottling.