James Suckling Interviews: Sebastian Zuccardi

James Suckling Interviews features innovative and influential winery owners, winemakers and industry notables representing the new generation that is shaping tastes, trends and techniques in the greater wine world. 

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Sebastian Zuccardi was raised in a pioneering viticultural family in Argentina whose expansion and promotion of Mendoza grapes established them as one of the founding and most influential winemaking families in the country. His paternal grandfather, Alberto Zuccardi, planted the first vineyards east of Mendoza in 1963, focusing on providing accessible Mendoza wines to an eager domestic market. His father, Jose Alberto Zuccardi, founded the influential Santa Julia brand (named after Sebastian’s sister), among other labels in the portfolio, shifting the company focus to foreign markets and higher-quality wines. Since 2008, Sebastian has been dedicated to the deep study and understanding of the Uco Valley’s terroir and to producing premium, site-specific wines with elegance, balance and texture as well as a pure expression of place. JamesSuckling.com’s Susan Kostrzewa talked with him about his continued, intrepid search of the perfect cool-climate mountain sites, malbec’s long and inextricable connection to Mendoza soil and wine’s ability to connect people in our frenetic times.

You’ve been a champion of producing single-vineyard and parcel wines, particularly for your very top wines in recent years, and have received very high scores for these efforts [up to 99 points]. How different are the soil types and microclimates in the Uco Valley?

The Uco Valley is a very unique place because of the relationship with the Andes mountains. The mountains create identity through the climate conditions, the landscape, the water, the soils. In short distances, the altitude changes a lot. The location of the vineyards and closeness to the mountains have a big impact on the temperatures, and we have a lot of soil diversity because of the way the soils were formed [and the resulting alluvial fans]. The work that we have been doing in the last 15 years has been very focused on understanding the differences of these soils and conditions and looking to the future. The Uco Valley is more about regionality than the grape. Because if I show you the malbec from Altamira and malbec from San Pablo and I just label them “malbec,” I’m just creating a commodity. But when you taste the wines, you are going to see their uniqueness of place.

Many top wine producers such as yourself are planting or acquiring new vineyards in cooler areas in Uco such as San Pablo. Is this a trend we are likely to see continue and why is it necessary? What are the limitations in how high you can go?

Today, we aren’t looking for overripe or overextracted wines. We are looking for wines that have less alcohol, more finesse, more elegance. This is very connected to the exploration we are doing in the region. We’re going to San Pablo because the altitude and the distance to the mountain makes it one of the coldest areas in the valley, and you can feel it in the wines. We are also planting a vineyard and we have a wine that we have been making from a vineyard at 1,700 meters. Ten years ago it was impossible to think about this. On altitude, frost is a big limitation. But some vineyards or areas planted at higher altitudes can be productive as long as we have a window where we can complete the viticultural cycle.

At the heart of your vision for a purer, more focused expression of malbec is a concrete program at Piedra Infinita winery in Altamira that consists of 170-plus concrete vats and no oak barrels. Can you talk about what inspired this approach and how it ties to your winemaking philosophy at Zuccardi? Why are the Concreto wines so important to your brand and to the Uco Valley?

Concrete isn’t new in Mendoza; the old wines used concrete. It's back to the future and our goal is to use techniques that are geared toward the future. Our challenge was to show that malbec has more than one face. We first worked with concrete in 2014 in this winery and it was special for us because it was a way to focus on purity. It allowed us to avoid sweetness and focus more on texture, showcasing the properties where we cultivate in Altamira, in San Pablo and their unique stony and calcareous soils.  Many years ago a great malbec was something very high in alcohol, very black, with a lot of oak and a sweet character. Concreto is a wine that is a selection of the most stony, calcareous soils of the property, fermented with whole bunches and 100 percent fermented and aged in concrete. Concrete doesn’t give any taste or flavor to the wines and is very efficient in the management of temperature, but also has less micro-oxygenation when you age the wines. But you can make a great wine in concrete and you can make a disaster in concrete. The most important work that we do is the selection of the terroir, and then the work in the vineyard because we need to be precise and show the full potential of the place. And then finally the winery is where we take care of the expression of the place.

What about any climate changes in your region and how you are managing them?

 It’s not clear that the temperatures are rising fast in the Uco Valley because of its proximity to the mountains, but in the last 11 years, except last year, we have less water and less snow in the Andes. The first challenge we’ll have will be the availability of water, not the change of temperatures. We can do many things to manage this. Here, the climate conditions change in short distances so every time that you go up in altitude, you are moving to a cooler weather. In cooler weather, you need less water. We can also use drip irrigation, which needs much less water than flood irrigation. Also, the use of rootstocks means the vines can develop bigger root systems that are very water-efficient.

You’re also passionate about sparkling wines and bottlings like Zuccardi’s blanc de blancs, which reflects the increasing potential the Uco Valley has for new styles and varieties in addition to malbec. Can you talk more about this project, and are there any new varieties you are either experimenting with or that excite you as regards the potential of the Uco Valley and Mendoza?

Yes, I think Argentina, and the Uco Valley in particular, has a big potential for whites and sparklings. Argentina focused so much on reds in the 1990s that we forgot this potential. But luckily in the last 15 years many producers are coming back to put energy into these categories. I came to the Uco Valley because I had a sparkling project with friends, and we were looking for cooler conditions in terms of slower ripening and a higher level of acidity. And when we go closer to the Andes, we have fantastic conditions for sparkling and whites. We have higher levels of acidity, the balance of the wines is much better and there’s great aging potential. If you go to the highest and coldest part of the valley, in my view, chardonnay is the best grape to explore. In the middle area of the Uco Valley, semillon is a traditional grape with older vineyards. For reds, malbec is the best vehicle for expressing our region, but cabernet franc can be a good partner to malbec.

FROM THE VAULT [2015]: SEBASTIAN ZUCCARDI ON THE NEW WAVE OF MALBECS IN ARGENTINA 

You’ve said that you are a wine drinker before a winemaker, and that your key focuses as a wine drinker are the pleasure the wines bring, the story behind the wine and how the wine pairs with foods. Do you think more winemakers should think like the consumers they are serving? With wine consumption declining, how can the industry ensure that more people drink wine.

I’m a wine drinker. I love wine. It's my passion. I'm always thinking about wine. I'm thinking about what I'm going to drink at home tonight. And for me, to open a bottle of wine is always an experience. In my view, it’s the most beautiful drink because of its diversity, because every bottle of wine tells us the history of the place where the grapes are coming from, who makes the wine, and the year in which that wine was made.

To improve wine consumption, we should talk about the history of the wine and how it is part of a bigger experience around a table. Why did wine consumption grow during the pandemic? Because people had time at home. And wine was a great way to enjoy the time. I'm optimistic and think the values of wine will come back because we need to stop and think about what we are doing. And I think wine is a great opportunity to bring people together and create conversations.

What would you like people to know about the past, present and future of wine in Argentina?

People think Argentina is new in making and drinking wine. When you think about our history, it was the Italian and Spanish immigration that brought the tradition to drink wine, and for many years we were consuming that wine here. When we look at Argentina or the Uco Valley or any area, it’s the result of many generations of viticulture working in the place. And malbec was not a marketing plan – it was something that really happened in the field. When you talk about malbec in the Uco Valley it’s the same as when you talk about sangiovese in Montalcino, or when you talk about a nebbiolo in Barolo or when you talk about the pinot noir in Burgundy. It’s a grape that is an expression of the terroir. Our history and experience mean we have a diverse industry in style and in size of producers. We also have diversity in climate conditions and soils expressed in our wines. Argentina is a country that is a serious player and has a great possibility to be one of the important players in the wine world.