2022 Zuccardi Concreto Malbec Paraje Altamira Mendoza 750 ml

Sebastián Zuccardi is one of the shooting stars of Argentine wine. His vision for the future of his country’s wine industry is crystal-clear and ambitious—and nothing embodies this better than his Concreto Malbec.

What sets Concreto apart is Zuccardi’s approach: He takes fruit grown in some of his stoniest soils then ferments and ages it entirely in concrete. It’s a pure look at the heights the grape can attain in the country’s top vineyards—and a bold declaration that the best terroirs in Argentina can achieve greatness with next to no embellishment.

We’ve offered this wine in past vintages and it garnered glowing member-reviews, and the 95-point 2021 might be one of the best yet. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate declared: “This is a beautiful iteration of a cuvée that routinely offers a definitive example of contemporary Uco Valley Malbec.”

Zuccardi is a winemaker with an incredibly contagious passion for terroir. He’s so obsessed with Mendoza that he constructed his winery from stones he found in his vineyards—a feat that earned a “World’s Best Vineyard” honor from CNN in 2019. His mad-scientist-level passion also won him a spot on Decanter’s list of South America’s Top 10 winemakers.

On our visit, Sebastián encouraged us to “try a stone” when we asked what he credits for the special texture of his wines. We did, and the chalkiness of the rocks is indeed evoked in the polished minerality of his finished Concreto. 

He smiled, then said, “Why would I want to cover all that magic with oak?”