Cru Mendoza: Three terroirs where Argentine wine is being taken to new heights

It’s a moment that Alejandro Vigil, oenologist at Catena Zapata and El Enemigo, remembers very well: ‘We started to separate out parcels in Gualtallary so we could tend to each consistently in its own way.’

For decades, he has been making wines with grapes from separate parcels that, while they might sit a metre or two apart, produce wildly different wines.

Vigil’s findings have changed the discourse in Argentine wine. For years, Mendoza sold Malbec as a monolithic product.

The key factor in its promotion was the winemaking regime and the star oenologist behind it, while the place, or places, from which the grapes came was only mentioned to add a little local colour.

‘Argentina now finds itself at a point where it must define who it wants to be,’ says Edgardo del Popolo at PerSe Wines. Winemakers in Argentina have moved on from just making the best wine they can to making the right wine for the right place.

This is especially true in the sub-regions of Gualtallary, Paraje Altamira and Los Chacayes.

‘People are often amazed that the difference in Mendoza is so marked even within a relatively short distance,’ says Madeleine Stenwreth MW, an expert in Argentina’s wines. Her Master of Wine dissertation on the effect of altitude on Malbec in Mendoza earned her the Quinta do Noval Award for best research paper in 2008.

From valley to mountain

This shift was initiated by changes in the vineyard rather than in the winery. Andrés Vignoni at Raquis sums it up well: ‘We’ve moved on from valley viticulture to mountain viticulture.’

In the past, land was levelled to allow for mechanisation, but that practice has been abandoned – levelling involves stripping away the original soil, which is precisely what winemakers want to preserve.

With the new approach, the rows of vines follow the terrain and the local flora is maintained in order to ensure that all the conditions required to conserve the wine’s authenticity are met.

‘It makes you a vine-focused oenologist,’ says Vignoni.

Sebastián Zuccardi outlines a succinct hierarchy: ‘The climate first, then the soil.’

Geophysicist Guillermo Corona author of the book Raíces del Vino (‘The Roots of Wine’, October 2025), explains how this comes through in the glass: ‘The climate is reflected in the fruit and on the nose, the soil in the mouth.’

Gualtallary

Rising from 915m to 1,600m over a distance of just 16km within the Tupungato region, Gualtallary’s alluvial soils contain calcium carbonate in markedly shifting quantities and forms, which can produce radical changes in the resulting wine within just a few hectares of space.

Researchers and producers have identified a range of further potential subdivisions, but none has official recognition as yet: to date, Gualtallary itself hasn’t even been granted Geographic Indication status.

Vigil pithily sums up the texture obtained as ‘tension and verticality’. ‘Many of the wines here seem to extend upwards rather than to the sides,’ he says.

Del Popolo adds: ‘When we began to understand how the climate interacts with the soil, we started to produce wines with a sense of place. We weren’t simply looking to make a great wine, we were looking to make a Gualtallary wine.’

Malbec continues to dominate in Gualtallary, but the district is increasingly drawing attention with its Chardonnays, which are some of the most precise in the country, and Cabernet Francs.

Paraje Altamira

The landscape in Altamira, a highly regarded sub-region in the San Carlos department of the southern Uco Valley, can be misleading: the continuous plots of vineyards and rows of poplars make it difficult to believe that the area is actually a desert.

This was the first terroir in the valley where the prevailing sense of place was backed up with hard scientific evidence.

In 2013, it was named the first Geographic Indication in Argentina, a sub-region defined not by administrative borders but by the natural terrain, soil samples, climate data and laboratory testing.

The vineyards here grow at an elevation of 975m-1,100m, generally lower than those of Gualtallary.

However, the climate isn’t warm: cool air flows down the slope to gather at the bottom, meaning that the fruit takes longer to ripen and spring frosts endanger the harvest.

‘Putting it down to elevation alone isn’t enough,’ says Federico Gambetta of Altos Las Hormigas.

Calcium carbonate combines with lime in the soils to produce wines that possess rounded tannins and a texture that Gambetta describes as a mouthful of chalk.

Paz Levinson, co-founder of wine events company Argentina Reloaded and the DWWA Regional Chair for Argentina & South America, expands upon the aromatics: ‘Altamira produces more floral notes, violet, dark fruit and a little red fruit. It has a potent freshness but isn’t as sharp [as the feel in areas further north].’

Malbec is the principal medium, but old-vine Semillons are one of Paraje Altamira’s best kept secrets: these venerable vineyards produce whites with a depth rarely seen elsewhere.

Los Chacayes

A latecomer to Argentina’s wine region scene it may have been, but Los Chacayes, on the western side of Uco Valley’s Tunuyán department, grew rapidly.

The GI was declared in late 2017 and the area went from barely having any vineyards to being one of the most rapidly expanding districts in the valley.

With vineyards growing at about 1,100m-1,400m, the landscape is more open than in Altamira but is pressed up against the mountains.

The wines here tend to be relatively spicy and potent. ‘We haven’t yet seen the best of Los Chacayes,’ says Vignoni.

Stenwreth caught a glimpse when she tried a Riccitelli wine from one of the higher vineyards:

‘It’s quite different from what I was expecting from Los Chacayes,’ she admits. The highest part, she discovered, is a whole other world compared to that further down in the same GI.

Malbec heads up the planted area, but there are also plots of Garnacha, Syrah and Mourvèdre – Mediterranean varieties that thrive in the rocky terrain, which isn’t found elsewhere in the greater valley.

Cru or not?

In its original usage, in the vineyard classification of the Burgundy region in France, a cru is a formally delineated, named plot of land where centuries of experience show that the wines produced are of superior quality and character.

Mendoza’s Gualtallary, Paraje Altamira and Los Chacayes aren’t ‘crus’ in the strict sense of the word, therefore.

But the three do introduce a discourse based around a sense of place – one that bears more resemblance to the broader Burgundian concept of ‘village wine’ than that of classified parcels.

Zuccardi advises caution: ‘The worst thing we can do is get ahead of ourselves. These are just the foundations on which the future will be built.’

Vigil is more welcoming of the ‘cru’ term, though with caveats: ‘If it helps us to think in terms of place, then it’s very constructive. If it misleads us into thinking we know it all already, then it’s a trap.’

However, Stenwreth points to the unfinished business: ‘It is a nightmare when I hear someone say, “This tastes like Argentine Malbec.” The time has come to move towards a place-based logic, because these localities already stand for quality.’

Great terroirs aren’t declared, they emerge after decades of painstaking work. The language of Argentinian crus is being written now, vintage by vintage, parcel by parcel.

Wines from three Argentine crus in the making

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