Surely in recent years you have come across a wine made by him, under the brand “The balancer“. And it is very likely that you liked it and even recommended it. The person behind this line of wines is John Ubaldinia winemaker who ten years ago began the hard path of undertaking to have his own winery.
Juan, who once confessed that he never imagined himself doing office work and that he always felt fascinated by his grandfather who went out touring the country selling Mendoza wine, started at the age of 17 to do internships in different wineries.
One of his last jobs under a dependency relationship was with a benchmark like Marcelo Pelleriti, from the Monteviejo winery, located in Clos de los Siete. After that great school, he decided to embark on an adventure.
“The most complex part of leaving a stable job is the uncertainty, the jump into the unknowneither. The idea was always there, the project was there and it was quite tangible because I had already been doing something along with my work. But that uncertainty of not knowing what will happen was a great fear, a great mountain that I had to cross“, explains John, in dialogue with iProfessional.
Juan Ubaldini launched his own winery 10 years ago
“I had to overcome my fears, but with Monday’s newspaper, having autonomy It was the most beautiful decision I could make in my professional life”, he stresses.
Today, that Monday newspaper tells him that in his own warehouse in the Uco Valleybuilt to lung, is producing about 100,000 bottles. And that his last name is synonymous with super drinkable wines, which from the labels speak a lot about the author, but which reveal a lot about the terroir, thanks to his always sensitive approach.
Terroir wines with a focus on Valle de Uco
His project started a decade ago with three red wines, under the line The balancer and today it already has ten different products, having added whites, rosés and limited editions. In addition, he has just launched his personal line, “John Ubaldini“, where the main focus is to show the particularities of the terroir, a theme that mobilizes him.
“Ten years ago I clearly remember that the discussion about whether more wood or less wood in wines was put on the table. In my particular case, without going to any extreme, I always looked for the expression of a varietal together with the imprint that it gives it a certain terroir, a certain climate. That is what I seek to respect and transmit to consumers,” he adds.
Juan Ubaldini seeks, in each wine, to highlight the particularities of the terroir
Juan acknowledges that, although winemakers in general were always “respectful of the land”, before the wines were more “made up” by the wood, while there was a slightly more commercial look. However, hand in hand with what he calls a “wine revolution”, today there are more wineries making more frank wines, thanks to a much more mature vision of the potential of the terroir.
When asked what is the main change in the “Juan winemaker” from ten years ago Regarding the current one, he takes his time to reflect. “There appears again the word ‘maturity‘. With experience, one adds concepts and knowledge and applies them. I am a wine consumer and, as such, my preferences have been changing. And this has been happening to many other consumers as well.”
And this is clearly reflected in the wines he has produced in recent years and to which he has signed: “I bet on making Frank wines, enjoyable wines, without so much twisting and without so much technical lap”.
And before anyone suggests whether he makes “no intervention” wines, he clarifies: “I don’t like to use that concept because we intervene a lot, mainly in terms of caring for the crop and we are also very careful at the time of production. But all this intervention points to to leave the wine as little made up, as little handled as possible, so that it has that natural expression of the terroir and the variety and that the technological turn does not change them”.
The two terroirs that blow your mind
Currently, all the wines it produces come 100% from the Uco Valley. “I have to work both worlds: the ‘old world’ of the Valley, which is La Consulta and Vista Flores, where there are old vineyards, almost centuries old, which are slightly warmer areas and with slightly richer soils; and also, I work with the newer areas, which are higher and have poorer soils, such as Gualtallary, the highest part of Altamira,” he explains.
Juan Ubaldini is producing 100,000 bottles per vintage
When asked to choose “the place” to make wines, he smiles and acknowledges how difficult this question is: “I can’t choose just one, I would have to choose so many Altamira as Gualtallary. In the first of these terroirs I can obtain hyper wines, mega classics but also more modern things, it is more plastic. And of Gualtallary, what can I say? It’s a luxury, there you can get wines that make themselves and they are a mess.”
Regarding the varieties, the Malbec it is the spearhead, representing 60% of everything it produces. However, he likes complex battles and defends tooth and nail the potential of an emblematic variety, known throughout the world, but which gradually fell into ostracism: “I am very much in love with Merlot. It is an almost forgotten and undervalued variety, but one that I have always worked with due to its enormous potential. I had always made it in cuts but I decided to release it as a varietal, under the Juan Ubaldini line, and the critics ranked it as one of the best in the country. It’s a pride for me”.
His winery turned ten years old. What began as a bet full of fears, ended up becoming a great reality, full of vintages, rich wines and a lot of learning. How does Juan imagine the next ten years? “The objective is to grow but in a sustainable way, always handling low volumes, no more than 200,000 bottles. We also want to consolidate ourselves in target markets and expand the portfolio with a diversity of terroirs and products, with organic wines, without sulphites or low in sulfites and suitable for vegans. We understand that there is a need on the part of consumers and we want to offer alternatives that are in line with this trend,” he concludes.