Winemaker Notes
Pair with grilled or roasted meats like beef, lamb or quail, and pasta with cream-based or spicy sauces.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Susana Balbo and her team chose Gualtallary for the Nosotros bottling in this warm vintage. There is huge breadth of complexity to the nose with graphite and tarry black and blue fruit. Dark minerals and a hint of cocoa powder and cigar box. Full-bodied and juicy on the palate with lots of broad-shouldered, fine-grained tannins. Intense, concentrated and incredibly persistent. Minerals in the end. Drinkable now, but better from 2026.
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Wine Spectator
A real head-turner that develops with air, showing dried violet and dark chocolate notes, with balsam details melding with rich blackberry and plum flavors around a rich, savory core. Picks up mineral nuances and stretches out nicely on the broad finish.
Susana Balbo graduated from Don Bosco University in Mendoza in 1981 and established herself as Argentina’s first female enologist and, since then, has been considered one of Argentina’s top winemakers. Three times her industry peers elected her to the Presidency of Wines of Argentina because of her work ethic, innovative winemaking techniques and dedication to the worldwide success of Argentine wine.
After working for twenty years as a consulting winemaker, Susana founded her own brand in 2000. In 2001, she broke ground for her winery in Agrelo in the Luján de Cuyo district of Mendoza. There, she makes her Susana Balbo "Signature" line of wines, as well as wines under the Crios, Nosotros and BenMarco labels. Her winemaking approach for the wines that bear her name is to seamlessly apply her human touch and enhance the grape’s innate character.
Over several decades of winemaking in Argentina, Susana has earned a reputation for a pioneering spirit and innovation. She is known for experimenting with various barrel sizes and aging regimens, fermentation of wine in egg-shaped concrete fermenters, and wild yeast fermentations. The Wine Advocate's Luis Gutierrez dubbed her groundbreaking barrel-fermented Torrontés one of the "10 Argentine Wines to Drink before You Die."
Most distinguished and celebrated from Argentina’s Mendoza, Malbec has seen runaway success since the early 2000s. Mendoza’s agreeable, continental climate with hot, dry summers and cold snowy winters allows the perfect conditions for growing outstanding Malbec. This grape is easy to like for its lusty, deep flavors and aromas of blackberry, plum, red cherry, autumn spice and tilled earth. It’s easy to find delicious, fruit-driven, affordable everyday examples and in prices beyond, quite exceptional ones with dense, supple textures that make them capable of aging.