Zuccardi Aluvional La Consulta

The 2013 Aluvional La Consulta was harvested earlier in this vintage. Zuccardi has made a few changes to fine tune the wines from the heart of La Consulta - a zone where the ripening can change very quickly as its a lower and warmer zone than Altamira, for example. It comes from a vineyard planted in 1978 in a place called Viña Chacón, a parcel in the south of the Uco Valley in the San Carlos department where the grape bunches are shaded by a pruning method that works well in warmer places. This has a perfume of violets, aromatic herbs and the blue fruit (if I had to single out one fruit here it would be blueberry) that I'm finding in so many of Zuccardi's wines. They used 30% whole clusters (which they believe provides freshness). Despite being ripe, powerful and concentrated, it's much more elegant and refined than the powerful wines most people associate with La Consulta. 2,500 bottles.

Dark purple. Sweet with a hint of cocoa. Salty finish. Polished. Sweet and salt. Seems a bit more conventional than most.