About
Ever wonder what a mountain would taste like in a glass of wine? Not just any mountain—but the Andes of South America, one of the highest and most extreme mountain ranges on Earth. Zuccardi Wines of Uco Valle in Mendoza, Argentina, is capturing exactly that through precision winemaking. Zuccardi uses concrete instead of oak to express these mountain-born flavors in their purest form, unmasked by oak, letting the Andes speak in your glass. Their wines range from powerful, vibrant, minerally driven expressions to deep, layered wines full of dark fruit and natural tannins infused with warm spices and aromas. These are mountain wines in the truest sense—pure, unmasked expressions shaped by geology and climate rather than technique.
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People
Listening to the Land The story of Zuccardi is inseparable from the people who chose to listen rather than impose. Led by Sebastián Zuccardi, the third generation of the family, the philosophy is simple but demanding: wine should express its origin, not the hand that made it. Precision matters—but only in service of identity. Every vineyard, every parcel, every stone is given the chance to speak on its own terms. Inside the winery, this philosophy becomes practice. Micro-terroirs are vinified separately. Concrete replaces oak wherever purity and transparency are paramount. Tradition remains—not as nostalgia, but as continuity—most notably in José Zuccardi Malbec, which honors Sebastián’s father and the roots of Argentine winemaking. Here, winemaking is not about control. It is about trust.
Valle de Uco, Mendoza
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Argentina
Place
Where Snow Becomes Wine The Uco Valley is unlike anywhere else in the world. Vineyards here are planted right against the 5,000-meter-high mountains of the Andes, at elevations of 1,100 to 1,700 meters (3,600 -5,500 ft) higher than almost anywhere on Earth. Rainfall is scarce—just ten inches a year—so irrigation is essential. But the water that nourishes these vines begins as snow high in the Andes. Zuccardi is, quite literally, transforming snow into wine. Over millions of years, glaciers, rivers, and gravity fractured the mountains and carried their stones downward. These fragments settled into more than forty overlapping alluvial fans, each with its own geological fingerprint. Calcium carbonate rich stones, altitude, slope, distance from the mountains, and microclimates all combine to create extraordinary diversity within just a few kilometers. When you taste Zuccardi wines, you are tasting this complexity. You are tasting a piece of the mountain.
Culture
Even the winery itself belongs to the land. Constructed entirely from local stone, sand, and water, the building blends seamlessly into the Andes. It is meant to feel permanent—like it was uncovered rather than built. Inside, concrete tanks dominate the space, chosen for their ability to preserve freshness and allow terroir to remain unmasked. At the heart of the winery lies the Infinite Stone, discovered during construction and left untouched. It symbolizes time, unity, and origin—a reminder that everything here begins and ends with the mountain. From this stone, a corridor leads outward toward the vineyards and snow-capped peaks, ending in the tasting room—where geology, climate, and human restraint finally meet in the glass.
