Our Wine Choice: Zorzal Malbec Tupungato Valle de Uco El Barba 2019

Our newest feature series, Our Wine Choice, focuses on the one wine our tasters thought most stood out during the past week’s worth of tastings. It won’t necessarily be the highest-rated wine, but one notable for its uniqueness, taste, style, drinkability and affordability, among other factors. Each week, one of the JamesSuckling.com tasting team will pick his or her favorite.

Malbec might not strike you for its finesse and drinkability, but over the last few years leading producers in Argentina have reimagined the varietal and brought out fresher versions with unique identities that reflect place and local landscapes. Many of these are much spicier and peppery offerings with wild herbal character from some of the most extreme, elevated areas.

These wines don’t hit you over the head with extraction but triumph with something more vibrant, juicy and linear while showing serious complexity and depth of intensity and structure. One great example: the Zorzal Malbec Tupungato Valle de Uco El Barba 2019.

Zorzal is known for value malbecs that show purity, freshness, balance and drinkability. And El Barba 2019 delivers even more layers again with its floral and herbal take on malbec. The crisp yet blue fruit is especially attractive in this wine, which comes from vines planted in 2013 at an elevation in the sandy rich soils of Gualtallary.

“We try to harvest with a pH of no more than 3.3, to guarantee a good natural acidity that will support this wine for many years,” winemaker Juan Pablo Michelini told me.

The medium- to full-bodied palate is convincingly intense yet linear, nimble and almost ethereal and streamlined, with fresh and polished tannins. The first vintage was made in 2016, and 2019 was made in a very limited quantity of just 1,000 bottles, delivering a wine that is irresistibly drinkable now even if it could easily be put away in the cellar.

– Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor