2018 Almarada Malbec Uco Valley Mendoza 750 ml

We landed at Aeropuerto Mendoza at midnight, a long, dark drive to Tupungato still ahead of us and with it, the threat of making a wrong turn down some endless desert road. We were in search of a small Uco Valley winery we’d never visited before and knew next to nothing about

On a tip from a critic who had raved about the wine over dinner, we’d flown down on a hunch that Almarada Malbec could be one of the greatest South American values of the year. After two days of tasting, there was no doubt left in our minds that the 2018 Antonio Mas Almarada Malbec offered off-the-charts New World quality at a deal that was impossible to walk away from: just $13.99 per bottle.

“It really over-delivers in glass,” wrote Tim Atkin in his glowing 91-point review about this hidden southern gem. “Sourced from a ten-year-old vineyard in La Arboleda, it’s plush, ripe, and quite forward.”

The availability of this wine outside Argentina is very limited, loosened only slightly as restaurant allocations have drooped. Without our overnight, bleary-eyed flight, there’s little chance we’d even be able to sell this wine today, meaning we’d all be missing out on the aromas of steeped violets, mint, and wet rocks layered over a muscular palate spread with farmer’s market blackberries. It’s an under-$15 Mendoza jewel scooped up from the dust of the Andean foothills.

“Spearmint?” we asked. The son of Antonio Mas—the legendary septuagenarian winemaker behind the Almarada Malbec—shook his head and looked around at the others with a shrug. Antonio does not speak English, so his son was translating, but even his language skills could not account for the fascinating but elusive tasting note we’d fixated on while tasting this wine.

It’s not uncommon to find a hint of mint in beautifully fresh reds like this one, but never before had we tasted a wine that was a dead ringer for this particular species of mint. Dictionaries were brought out and paged through, intense discussion followed at a rat-a-tat pace and, at last, a breakthrough ensued:

“Hierbabuena!” they said. This Argentinian version of spearmint grows like brush in the region, similar to the garrigue of Southern Rhône or fynbos of South Africa, excelling in the same dry, arid conditions as Antonio’s vines.

That we picked up on this local flora in the wine speaks both to this Malbec’s complexity as well as the unique conditions in which these vines grow. Antonio, who has been making wines here for 55 years, was one of the earliest pioneers in Tupungato, relying on his training as an agronomist to study the soils of the barren region. What he found led him to believe that for all its ruggedness, this was an ideal spot for world-class Malbec.

The tough, rocky soil forces vines downwards, immersing roots in rich mineral sublayers. Conditions are no less forbidding above ground, with strong winds blowing across the plains and temperatures dropping from the low 80s by day into the low 40s at night. There is so little water in Tupungato that the District of Mendoza is no longer permitting winery licenses, and there are fewer than five other wineries in the region. The few wines that do make it out of this difficult land grab you with their intensity, approachability, and beauty.

Antonio is not a "Flying Winemaker"—his approach to growing vines and making wines is deeply and exclusively vested in this region and its traditions. Uco Valley Malbec is what he knows, and we’re thrilled to share the special fruits of his labor at a record value today.