Argentina’s leading newspapers La Nacion and Clarin Gourmet recently covered our Argentina tasting report with extensive features in their pages. The full report came out just last week and recounted the two-week trip through Mendoza done by James Suckling and the JamesSuckling.com tasting team, during which they tasted more than 1,500 wines. Read the full report on our site here.

In La Nacion, Sebastián A. Ríos wrote (translated):

The American critic James Suckling has published his annual report on Argentinian wine giving a perfect score of 100 points not to one bottle, but five!

“All these 100-point wines shared the structure and precision of the greatest wines on Earth from first growth Bordeaux and grand cru Burgundy to cult Napa Valley cabernets and Super Tuscan reds. They showed the purity and uniqueness that spotlights the unique soils, climates and vintages of Argentina.”

This year marks the best performance of Argentinian wine, according to Suckling.

“I have been going to Argentina to taste every year for the last six years and I have never encountered so many great and outstanding wines at every price level. It’s a benchmark year for this wine-producing nation.”

Carmen Ercegovich of Clarin Gourmet wrote:

Suckling’s 2020 report on Argentina was released amid the coronavirus pandemic that occupied all spaces of public and private attention. However, the highly positive evaluation of the wines including five 100 point-wines is still good news for Argentinian wine industry.

In his selection of the 100-point wines, four are reds and one is white, of which only one is not from Mendoza but from Río Negro. Two wines are malbec and two are from the same winemaker and winery (Alejandro Vigil, for Catena Zapata). One of the five 100-point wines was already included among the best in the 2019 report, the Cheval des Andes 2017, a blend with 62% malbec and 38% cabernet sauvignon, which will be released for sale in September.

While Suckling applauded the quality of the wines, he was critical of the prices.

“All Argentine wines with perfect scores are very expensive,” he said, noting that the price of these bottles could go up to $400 a bottle.

But he clarified that this is not the case for the entire market: “However, please don’t worry about their stellar prices. These wines are rare exceptions in the world of Argentine wine. Nearly all the other wines we tasted were a fraction of these elevated prices.

“The real headline wines in our tastings were not the handful of expensive collector wines but Argentina’s incredible selection and quality of mid-priced premium wines,” said Suckling, who tasted more than 1,500 labels over two weeks in the country.

It’s great to see such wide appreciation for the work being done by these stellar winemakers. Long may it continue!