Argentina Breaks Free With Some of Its Greatest Wines Ever
James snaps a photo of the vineyards at Bodega Monteviejo.
This year is the best ever for wines from Argentina. We took our annual trip to Buenos Aires and Mendoza in February and found no fewer than five 100-point wines as well as hundreds of other outstanding quality wines that come with a friendly price tag.
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. This is particularly true for Argentina wines arriving in the United States because many consumers are looking for better value and wines not affected by the 25 percent tariff on many European bottles.
Most of our perfect wines were pure malbecs such as the top bottling of Vina Cobos, the (Viña Cobos Malbec Mendoza Cobos 2017), and a single vineyard wine from Catena (Cateña Zapata Malbec Mendoza Adrianna Vineyard River Stones 2018). But we also gave a Catena chardonnay from Mendoza (Cateña Zapata Chardonnay Mendoza Adrianna Vineyard White Bones 2018) 100 points, and a sublime pinot noir from Patagonia (Chacra Pinot Noir Patagonia Treinta y Dos 2018). We also gave 100 points to the September-release 2017 Cheval des Andes, a wine made in Mendoza by the owners of Bordeaux’s famous Cheval Blanc.
Argentine wines on the global stage
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.
“I always want to make wines that show the quality of the vintage and respect the landscape,” said Alejandro Vigil, the winemaker at Catena and also his own winery Enemigo. “For example, when I taste my 2016s they are a little lighter in tannins because of the vintage while the 2018s are very definitive and structured. You can really see the character of the wines from where they came from and the year and the person who made them. That’s what the great wines of Argentina do.”
Our best wine of the tasting trip, Viña Cobos Malbec Mendoza Cobos 2017, certainly illustrated what he was talking about. The red’s transparency and definition were resounding, transmitting beautifully where and when it was made. Its character of sandalwood, blackcurrant, fresh mushroom and rose petal elated the senses while the compact and agile tannins and acid backbone energized the palate. Again, it received a rating of 100 points.
I also had the rare opportunity to re-rate the wine’s predecessor, the Viña Cobos Malbec Perdreil Lujájan de Cuyo Cobos 2011 that was my Wine of the Year in 2014. It also received 100 points. I was lucky enough to buy a magnum on a restaurant wine list in Buenos Aires and it was sensational. It highlights the wonderful age-worthiness of the new-wave wines of Argentina and the overall magic of malbec.
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- Various meats cook in an outdoor barbecue at Vines of Mendoza Resort in Uco Valley.
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- Marcelo Pelleriti is one of the most dynamic winemakers in Argentina.
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- Geese roam the biodynamically farmed vineyards of Kaiken.
As quality rises, so does price
The bad news is that the 2,200 bottles of the 2017 Cobos on release will be one of the most expensive wines ever produced in Argentina at $400 a bottle. In fact, all our perfect-rated Argentine wines are very expensive.
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. Moreover, 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. These are bottles that cost from $15 to $35 but they taste like they cost $30 to $100, or even more. We tasted hundreds of outstanding wines like this during this trip.
My team and I tasted more than 1,500 wines over a two-week period in Argentina, and we were impressed with so many wines from balanced and thoughtful malbecs to bold and savory chardonnays, not to mention delicious pinot noirs, cabernet francs, cabernet sauvignons and bonardas. And a small number of the best pinot noirs from Patagonia were really fantastic quality. And most of these bottles cost less than $30 a bottle. Many are less than $15.
“There is so much changing in the world but we are ready with our wines,” said Pepe Zuccardi, the head of the family winery Zuccardi. “Consumers and the trade seem more ready to accept our wines in the $15 to $50 a bottle range. We don’t want overripe, over-extracted and over-oaked wines in our country anymore. We have to show what comes from our vineyards. We want to talk about the place and not the winemaking.”
Argentina’s three great back-to-back vintages
The fact that you can buy just about anything with the vintages 2017, 2018 and 2019 on the label from Argentina at the moment is also a great advantage for Pepe and his winemaking peers. These three years are excellent quality and a needed break after the inconsistent 2016 and 2015 vintages, which suffered from rains during the harvests.
“The 2019 is a really a great year,” said Hans Vinding-Diers, best known as the owner and winemaker of Bodega Noemia in Patagonia but also a consulting enologist in Mendoza. “The 2018 was really good as well but you had to work a little harder. 2017 was rich and structured with some uneven hot and wet weather. It was a smaller harvest.”
I think we will be debating what is the best vintage of the trio for some time. At the moment, I have a slight preference for the 2017 due to the tannic structure of the wines, but the purity of fruit and definition of the wines of 2019 could outdo the 2017. I only tasted bottles of mostly entry level wines from 2019. The 2018s are a pretty balance of structure and pure fruit, perhaps best described as a mix of 2019 and 2017.
“I have experienced 34 harvests and the 2018 and 2019 are the best ever for me,” said Daniel Pi, head of the ubiquitous winery of Trapiche that makes wines under its brands and for others. “2020 should be excellent as well but we will have less quantity. We are harvesting and it is much less than we thought.”
In our tastings, it was impressive to see how many wines at $10 to $12 are outstanding quality. Big US vintners such as Costco and Amazon bottled delicious wines and large quantities that can equal millions of bottles. “We had access to outstanding grapes at every level of prices for making wines in the last three years,” said Pi.
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- James and Patricia Ortiz, owner of Tapiz, take a break from a tasting in Uco Valley.
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- Concrete fermentation eggs stand ready for the harvest this year.
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- Berenice Maulhardt of JamesSuckling.com stands in the immense wine cellar of the Buenos Aires restaurant of Don Julio.
Argentina still great for entry-level wines
I am happy to see more balanced and dry wines being made at entry level prices for wine lovers. This is especially important with the current situation in the world. Just about everyone appreciates great value wines that you can drink and afford every day. Even Amazon.com is in the game with a $9.99 and 90-point malbec called Cursive. Its fruity and balanced palate with hints of vanilla show an attractive contrast to the heavy and sweet value malbecs of the past.
As always, it’s hard to generalize about regions, and even subregions, but we found a few areas in Argentina that seemed to be making more excellent wines this year compared to past results. The most obvious was Salta. For as long as I can remember, most of the wines were over concentrated and jammy yet sometimes vegetal at the same time. But this year we found many balanced and refined wines with unique flavors and character. There’s a freshness and clarity now. A number of winemakers we spoke to agreed that this was a generational change in who is making wines and growing vines. See this article from Associate Editor Zekun Shuai to read how Salta is coming of age.
“Salta is doing now what Mendoza did seven years ago,” said Santiago Achaval who makes wines for Vines of Mendoza and Recuerdo. He is best known as the former owner of Achaval Ferrer. “New people have come and tried new things. The next generation is taking over. People have travelled more and they are more understanding with possibility of what they can do. People had this idea of what Salta was but now they know it was not the terrior that made the style of wines before. It’s a new game.”
One of those young turks of winemaking in Salta is Alejandro Nesman of Piattelli. He told our associate editor Zekun Shuai in February during his side trip to the area that their wines are getting fresher. “But remember that achieving fresh fruit you have to achieve ripeness first,” he added. “You don’t want fresh but diluted wines with lots of pyrazine character, which was once common here in Cafayate. Eight years ago when I arrived here lots of wines were underripe, full of pyrazine. Now the style has changed.”
Making less old-school-style wines is less of a problem when you are in new areas. I was really impressed with the many wines I tried from San Pablo in the Uco Valley. This is the newest officially recognized appellation in Argentina (November 2019) and it is also one of the highest in altitude in Mendoza ranging from about 1,100 to 1,700 meters altitude. It only encompasses about 500 hectares of vines with Salentein, Zuccardi and Tapiz controlling almost all. The almost three dozen wines from the region that I tasted from chardonnay to cabernet franc to malbec showed an intensity, crispness and brightness that reminded me of wines from neighboring Gualtallary (clearly Argentina’s best subregion) but they had an even more electric acidity.
“The vineyards are located right against the mountains of the Andes,” said Zuccardi, whose mountain wine Zuccardi Malbec Mendoza Valle de Uco San Pablo Poligonos Vinos de Montana 2018 was stunning with intense cracked black pepper and spice character to the linear and bright fruit. I rated it 96 points. “It gives the wines a very unique character.”
Patagonia is not a new area but new wines coming from there are eye openers. Look at the wines of Bodegas Chacra, which makes unique chardonnays and pinot noirs. The recent joint-winemaking effort with Burgundy’s esteemed Jean-Marc Roulot of Meursault has given the wines of Chacra a new soulful energy. They are not only more transparent to the unique soils and microclimates of the vineyard but they have an emotional sensibility that you only find in the great wines of the world. The two Roulot-touched chardonnays were wines I drank almost every night in Buenos Aires. Chacra Chardonnay Patagonia 2019 (99 points) and Chacra Chardonnay Patagonia Mainqué 2019 (96 points) are extremely hard to find but inspiring, heartfelt wines.
And don’t miss Chacra owner Piero Incisa della Rocchetta’s old vine pinot noir which we rated 100 points: Chacra Pinot Noir Patagonia Treinta y Dos 2018. “This is something different than Burgundy and only something that can be produced in Patagonia,” he said during a tasting in Buenos Aires. All of his wineries are biodynamically farmed.
Argentina’s nod to Burgundy
France’s Burgundy seems to be inspiring a number of winemakers in Argentina particularly in taming their tannins in red wines such as malbec. Some can be attributed to a reduction in new wood when aging in cellars but I think the reduction of extractions in fermentations and macerations has done a lot especially with malbec. And many winemakers I spoke to during our two-week trip commented about partial and whole berry fermentations and macerations with a Burgundy sensibility.
“What I am always interested in with Burgundy is the whole berry fermentation and the quality of the tannins,” commented Vigil. “The process gives it a more Burgundy-like texture, silky. We want this in our malbecs!”
Wonderful texture and in turn excellent drinkability is what the best wines of Argentina share, no matter the price. This is indeed a special moment and we urge you to buy and drink outstanding rated wines at every price level from the 2017, 2018 and 2019 vintages.
“We are feeling another kind of freedom here now,” said head winemaker Andrés Vignoni of Viña Cobos. “There is so much more to do here with fine wine. We have to focus on how to make wines better and better.”
– James Suckling CEO & editor