2023 Zuccardi Poligonos Cabernet Franc San Pablo Valley 750 ml

Sebastián Zuccardi is one of the most inspiring winemakers in the world—and his Polígonos Cabernet Franc from San Pablo is a window into exactly what makes him so remarkable.

The Polígonos line takes its name from the geometric shapes formed when you draw lines around Zuccardi’s village sub-regions on a map. Each wine in the series is a portrait of one place—its soil, its climate, its altitude—and this is as precise a portrait as he’s ever drawn.

San Pablo sits at around 1,300 meters above sea level in the heart of the Uco Valley. Sebastián began planting there in 2011, and of the 42 hectares that now make up his San Pablo holdings, 6.2 are planted to Cabernet Franc. The cold nights, alluvial soils layered with eroded stone, and clean mountain air make San Pablo one of the most compelling addresses for Cab Franc anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere.

The 2023 vintage in Mendoza was defined by scarcity and quality in equal measure. El Niño conditions brought heavy winter snowpack to the Andes and cool spring temperatures that delayed budburst—then Zonda winds swept through and decimated yields across the valley. What survived was exceptional: a summer of even warmth and minimal rainfall produced clean, concentrated fruit with surprisingly vibrant acidity.

In the cellar, Sebastián’s approach is characteristically restrained. The fruit is macerated for 20 days in concrete vats with indigenous yeast, then transferred to 2,500-liter foudres for aging. No new oak, no shortcuts—nothing between the wine and the place it came from.

A winemaker with an incredibly contagious passion for terroir, he’s so obsessed with the region that he constructed his winery from stones excavated while planting his Uco Valley vineyards—a feat that earned it “World’s Best Vineyard” honors. His mad-scientist-level passion also won him a spot on Decanter’s list of South America’s Top 10 winemakers.

When we hosted Sebastián at our offices, he described his philosophy in two words: “mountain wines.” Everything at Zuccardi, he told us, is in relationship with the mountains. The San Pablo Cab Franc is the clearest expression of that belief we’ve tasted.