2014 Aluvional Gualtallary Malbec

The aim of the Alluvional range is to demonstrate the different subregions of the Uco Valley, which is why they do not put the name of the variety on the label.  This cannot be labelled with Gualtallary as the appellation as it is not (yet) an official subregion of the Uco Valley. Malbec at 1,350 m. A little more scented and slightly more floral than the Paraje Altamira. But still closed and a touch reductively smoky. Slightly sweeter fruit on the palate, dark bramble, but also slaty, like dark stones on the finish. Dry finesse to the texture. Chalk gives the texture, apparently, and I can see it/taste it. Starts closed and opens on the back palate. Complex transition from nose to palate. (JH)

The 2014 Aluvional Gualtallary is pure Malbec from the Gualtallary part of Tupungato in Valle de Uco, sourced from small plots of Tupungato Winelands. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in concrete vats and matured, part in those concrete vats and part in used 500-liter oak barrels. It has all the wild herbs and flowers of the Tupungato countryside and that wilderness and the telltale violets from Malbec. But it's the palate where the soil selection really shows. The soils of Gualtallary are greatly varied, and there they select grapes from the stonier zones of plots close to the Monastery, where the limestone content is very high. The palate has the chalky, electricity and salty minerality that is making (these parts of) Gualtallary famous. The vineyards are higher than those used for the Aluvional Altamira, these are at some 1,300 meters altitude, which also seems to have helped compensate for the riper natural conditions of 2014. Sebastián tells me they worked very hard to select the grapes here, and the wine shows a jump in quality irrespective of the conditions of the vintage. 9,000 bottles were filled in November 2015.