Doña Paula

The project began in 1990, when the Chilean Claro group set out across Argentina looking for the best terroirs. The first estates were bought in 1997 with a condition that was uncommon at the time: to work only their own vines, buying no grapes from third parties. The name was chosen by Ricardo Claro, then owner of Santa Rita, as a nod to the link between the two countries.

The home base is Finca El Alto, in Luján de Cuyo, and from there the winery spread into the terroirs that interested it: Gualtallary, Ugarteche, San Carlos. In the Uco Valley it has three vineyards —Alluvia in Gualtallary, Los Cerezos in the Cordón del Plata and Los Indios in Cordón El Cepillo— which is where the estate wines come from.

What sets the house apart is the amount of fieldwork behind it. Since 2013 head winemaker Martín Kaiser has run a terroir research programme that has dug and studied more than one thousand three hundred and fifty soil pits and carried out over seven hundred micro-vinifications from different plots, seeking to understand how altitude and the alluvial cones that came down from the Andes over six million years ago shape the wines.