2018 Zuccardi Malbec Finca Piedra Infinita Paraje Altamira Valle de Uco 750 ml

Few wines declared by multiple critics to be essentially perfect can also be considered a great value, but this is one. And although we’re tempted to class it with a top-tier Left Bank Bordeaux like Léoville Las Cases (99 points, $300), precise comparisons fail. 

After all, Finca Piedra Infinita hails from a single vineyard that required over a thousand truckloads to remove its stones. It was grown among snow-capped mountains at 3,609 feet in elevation, fermented and matured chiefly in cement vats for maximum purity. 

But third-generation winemaker Sebastián Zuccardi is a man possessed, as many Wine Access members know from scores of past best-selling Zuccardi offers.

He’s at the forefront of a renegade crew of winemakers who are eschewing intrusive new oak in pursuit of transparent, site-specific wines that convey the Uco Valley’s Andean terroir. But no one else quite takes it to the lengths he does. His Finca Piedra Infinita hails from a single vineyard of 46 tiny plots which Sebastian deconstructs, reassembling a small selection of components into a showstopping blend of mineral purity and tension.

In a cool vintage like 2018, Sebastián pulls from the shallowest soils where he can count on faster ripening, only using plots with a sandy loam layer between 20 and 60 cm of thickness. This layer sits above granite rocks covered with calcium carbonate. Critics have compared this cuvée’s texture to “liquid chalk.”

Fermented with between 80% to 100% whole cluster, seeing very little oak influence, Sebastian has given himself and this release nowhere to hide. It’s a wine stark in its beauty, like the mountains themselves—a “world-class expression,” says critic Tim Atkin.