Dominio del Plata

A white wine hand in Agrelo

Barrel selection comes before the blend, and Susana Balbo, winemaker at Dominio del Plata in Mendoza, works from that decision outward. Her route to this cellar began with enology training at Don Bosco University in 1981 and cellar work at Michel Torino Winery in Salta the same year, where Torrontés became a discipline rather than a footnote. Before she opened her own house in 1999, she spent years as a consultant winemaker, moving between Argentine fruit and international expectations without giving up the precision of the bench. Dominio del Plata, in Agrelo within Luján de Cuyo, is the place where that practice took a family name and a fixed address.

The founding matters because it put Balbo’s white-wine intelligence and Mendoza red-wine material under one roof. She remains here as founder and winemaker, with Susana Balbo Wines tied to the same 1999 beginning. The cellar language is selection, control, and the “haute couture” approach the house uses for its top wines: choosing fruit, shaping fermentations, and building blends with close attention to each lot. Her signature work still turns on Torrontés, Malbec, and the willingness to let a wine keep both polish and site.

Fermentation split between steel, concrete and oak

The method at Dominio del Plata keeps stainless steel as the main vessel for primary fermentation, with concrete tanks and oak barrels used on a smaller scale. That split suits a portfolio that moves across Malbec, Torrontés, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Syrah, and it lets the winemaking hold temperature and texture in different ways without forcing one cellar answer on every wine. Hand harvest is part of the vineyard practice, with each variety picked by hand to protect the fruit before it reaches the crush pad.

The proprietary vineyard was planted in 2001, the same period in which the present winery began to take shape. In the cellar, the top Malbec work includes hand-harvested fruit, extended post-fermentation maceration, and aging in predominantly new oak barrels. For Nosotros Malbec, the house selects the best 40 barrels each year and leaves the wine for 18 months in new French oak. The yeast work sits between control and response: cultured and native yeasts both have a place. That range gives Balbo room to make wines that are cleanly built without being sealed off from the vineyard.

The cellar beside Osadia de Crear

The room in Agrelo has a modern, spare design, set among vineyard surroundings at the foot of the Andes. It is not a rustic stage set. The production space reads as a working house shaped for movement between tanks, barrels, bottling and storage, with the restaurant Osadia de Crear adding another rhythm to the property. Opened in 2013, the restaurant gives the winery a seasonal, locally sourced table beside the tasting room, so the wines do not sit apart from the food culture around them.

Conversation carries easily here, more cellar than spectacle. The view belongs to Luján de Cuyo, but the work remains close to the hands: fruit arriving from the vineyard, lots kept separate, barrels chosen for concentration and complexity, packaging made lighter, water recycled. The house also holds ISO 22000 certification, a practical frame for food safety and traceability through winemaking and shipping. Dominio del Plata’s next sentence is still written in the blend, and the clearest place to read it is a barrel of Nosotros Malbec.