Zuccardi Aluvional Gualtallary Malbec 2020 750ml

Deep red color with violet hues. Expresses a red and black fruit character with notes of blackberry, cherry, plum complemented by fresh herbal and violet notes. Juicy, with a lively acidity, mineral texture and elegant tannins. It has a long finish.

The Zuccardi Aluvional Gualtallary Malbec is selected from the best alluvial soils in the Uco Valley and expresses the characteristics and very essence of the Gualtallary terroir. Grapes are hand harvested from old vines grown in the rich alluvial soils then fermented in concrete vats before ageing in barrel and then in concrete vats. The nose displays red and black fruit characters with notes of blackberry, cherry and plum complemented by fresh herbal and violet notes. The palate is juicy, with a lively acidity, mineral texture and elegant tannins.

98 Points - Wine Advocate

The 2019 Aluvional Gualtallary comes from the section people call Monasterio, although the official division of subzones has not yet been approved. This is always the wildest (Sebastián Zuccardi calls it Wildtallary...), with an explosive nose of wild herbs and flowers, thyme, rockrose and lavender, interwoven with violets and coupled with a laced texture with very fine-grained, chalky tannins, showcasing what the zone can do and why it was made famous. They harvest by soil, because it's not all the same, and they look for mid-palate depth using parts where they have caliche stones but also a little bit of clay, just bellow the hills (los cerros). Their main work here is to avoid exuberance and give it restraint, and it comes through as refined and slender; if you let the grapes ripen too much, you can have heavier aromas reminiscent of black olives, of which there's nothing here. They do a gentler second half of the fermentation, just wetting the cap with buckets (by hand) and avoiding cold fermentations. It seems to work wonders... Simply superb, this is super elegant but in an austere, tight and precise way.

97 Points - Descorchados

In this malbec, the grapes that Zuccardi buys in Gualtallary play a role and make up 60% of this blend. The rest come from their own vineyards, all more than 1,400 meters above sea level in the north of the Uco Valley. The cool season helped underscore the ideas that you might have about the malbec from this area—the freshness, the verticality of the tannins, the flowers, the bright energy of a mountain wine, the sensation that there's something there beyond the fruit, something that the Andes adds in between. With no contact with oak—it was fermented with native yeasts in concrete, and then aged in those same vessels—this Aluvional goes beyond the idea of the variety and enters into a sense of place. A brilliant wine.

95 Points - Wine Spectator

With its bright aromas of red cherries, mulberries and chalk on the nose, this Malbec is no exception. The equally expressive palate delivers red berries and plums blended with a delicious potpourri of dried herbs that leads to a long satisfying finish.