Gualfín Tacana Reserva Vertical – 4 Bottles

The Tacana Reserva Vertical Collection is four years of one impossible vineyard, tasted side by side: one bottle each of the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 Tacana Reserva Malbec.

Every bottle comes from the same small planting of old-growth Malbec at Gualfín, the Bonner family ranch perched 8,421 feet up in the Calchaquí Valleys of northern Argentina — vines still on their original rootstock, untouched by phylloxera, farmed by gauchos more accustomed to roping bulls than picking grapes. No oak. Minimal intervention. Just mountain fruit from a place where vines have no business growing at all.

At that altitude, the weather is never the same twice — which means no two vintages are the same wine. The 2020 and the 2023 are siblings, not twins. Expect a wine so inky it looks nearly black: blackberry, leather, and smoke on the nose, a zing of cherry and cloves on the palate, with mint and black pepper emerging as each sip lingers. The vertical lets you taste what four different years did to the same ground — and argue about which one got it best.

This collection exists only as long as the cellar does. Just 27 bottles of the 2020 Reserva remain, which means at most 27 complete verticals can ever be assembled. When the 2020 is gone, so is the vertical — and the next Tacana vintage of any kind won’t arrive until 2027.

$525 for the four-bottle collection ($544 if purchased separately). First come, first served.