(Fine Dining Lovers) It’s a wine lover’s ultimate dream: running a winery, making vintages that score 100 highly-coveted Parker points, exploring local terroir to bottle its most honest expression, then soaking up all those liquid riches over a fine dinner while the sun slowly drops behind snowy Andean peaks. This is the Zuccardi family’s reality. And because they manage it all so incredibly well, Zuccardi Valle de Uco was voted the World’s Best Vineyard 2020 for the second consecutive year.

At 1,100 metres above sea level in Paraje Altamira, at the heart of Mendoza’s trendy Uco Valley, the winery offers untainted views of the mountain range, an ever-changing picture postcard of clouds, snow, sun and peaks. There are many ways to soak up that vista: over a paired lunch at Piedra Infinita Cocina restaurant, perhaps, or from the elevated tasting room? Maybe just strolling the Malbec vineyards with a glass of violet-hued Tito Zuccardi Paraje Altamira in hand? 

The Andes are responsible for the magic of this place, says oenological director Sebastián Zuccardi, the eldest of the three siblings that run the bodega. “The mountain range gives Uco Valley its identity, determining the weather, ensuring pure water sourced from Andean ice melt and creating complex and diverse alluvial soil in this elevated desert,” he says. 

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