2020 Matias Riccitelli The Party Malbec, Uco Valley, Argentina

This is an innovative style of Malbec from the Matias Riccitelli micro winery where they experiment with an array of techniques for coaxing the best expressions from Malbec grapes. This is a wine of great elegance! The Party 2020 Malbec is an opulent red, with lively floral character and great purity to the raspberry and plum fruit. It's vegan-friendly and produced with agro-ecological grapes sourced from the Uco Valley. Grapes were fermented in whole bunches and aged one year in concrete vessels. You can expect a bright and cheery red wine with fresh violets, cherry, blackberry, subtle spice, fine herbs and fine-grained, textured tannins. Lovely and easygoing. Drink or hold.*

Matías Riccitelli started his boutique winery in 2009, located in Las Compuertas at 1100 meters above sea level. It is the highest area of Lujan de Cuyo, and here he tends 20 hectares of ungrafted old vineyards.  

In 2015 a new project was begun: old vineyards of Semillon, Merlot and Malbec were discovered and reclaimed in Argentinian Patagonia. The vineyards are located in the Rio Negro high valley and were planted in the late 1960’s. The resulting wines are fresh, intensely aromatic and highly balanced.

All harvests are conducted by hand and fermentation takes place in small concrete vats and concrete eggs. Purity and delicacy in winemaking are prized by Matías and great care is taken in preserving the fruit’s singularity in order to obtain vibrant wines.

The grapes come from the Uco Valley.  Using gravity, we fill the open top tanks with a majority of whole bunches, delivering powerful floral character and berries. This Malbec is fresh and intense, where the typicity created in the vineyard becomes elegance in the wine.