Per Se Uni del Bonnesant: Argentina's Perfect Wine

Per Se Uní del Bonnesant Monte Alabanza 2024 just received 100 points from Tim Atkin — only 384 bottles of this Argentine cult wine exist.

In June 2026, Tim Atkin MW — the British Master of Wine who has spent decades tasting across Argentina's most remote vineyards — published his annual Special Report. Among 1,700 wines tasted, one received a perfect 100 points.

Not from a historic Bordeaux château. Not from a celebrated Burgundy domaine. From a hillside in Gualtallary, Mendoza, where 312 vines grow on a patch of land so rocky, so extreme, so improbable, that most viticulturalists would have walked past it without a second glance.

The wine is Per Se Uní del Bonnesant Monte Alabanza 2024. The vintage produced between 300 and 384 bottles. Fewer bottles than most restaurants hold in their cellar. Fewer than most collectors accumulate in a single year.

Tim Atkin called it "fresh, elegant, and refinedly natural" — and awarded it the highest score he has ever given to an Argentine wine. Not once, but twice in history. The first time was the 2019 vintage. Now, five years later, the 2024 vintage joins that rarefied company.

This is not luck. This is one of the most extraordinary vineyard stories in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Visionaries: Bonomi and Del Popolo

Behind Per Se are two names that Argentine wine insiders know well: David Bonomi and Edgardo "Edy" del Popolo.

Both built their reputations working at scale — Bonomi at Norton, Del Popolo at Susana Balbo — two of Argentina's most prestigious and high-volume producers. They understand industrial precision. They know what it takes to make wine at volume and make it consistently well.

Per Se is the opposite of everything they do at scale.

It is a family project, almost alchemical in its secrecy and intimacy. A project where the question is never "how much can we produce?" but "what is this specific piece of land trying to say?"

Del Popolo has described the discovery of the Uní del Bonnesant parcel with a clarity that is almost poetic: "When we planted, we realized it was very different. Because it's small, because there's no soil, and because it faces southeast on the slope of a hill — the coldest part of the vineyard. The plants produce very little. That's why the batch is so small. From the very first harvest in 2016, we decided to separate it."

That decision — made on intuition, confirmed by results — is now the foundation of one of Argentina's most celebrated cult wines.

The Impossible Vineyard of Monasterio

To understand Per Se Uní del Bonnesant, you need to understand Gualtallary — and specifically, the sub-zone called Monasterio.

Gualtallary sits at the northern edge of the Uco Valley, at elevations between 1,400 and 1,550 meters above sea level. It is already extreme. Intense UV radiation. Cold nights. Thin air. Soils that are stony, poor, and unforgiving.

The parcel where Uní del Bonnesant grows takes all of that and amplifies it.

The numbers: 0.3 hectares — smaller than most city blocks. 312 vines — planted at high density on a hillside. Planted in 2013 — still a young vineyard by grand cru standards. First separated harvest: 2016 — when Bonomi and Del Popolo realized what they had.

The soil is dominated by what locals call "caliche": a hyper-compact amalgam of sand, limestone, and rock that geologists recognize as calcic horizon. It is, essentially, natural concrete. The vines don't grow through it so much as around it, their roots pressing directly against chalky rock in search of the scarce water and nutrients that sustain them.

Del Popolo has said: "Anyone would think it's very hard for something to grow there. But it grows, it gives fruit, and it gives a great wine."

This is the paradox at the heart of great viticulture: the vine that suffers most gives the wine that moves you most. Stress produces concentration. Poor soil produces precision. Extreme altitude produces freshness and tension that warmer, richer terroirs simply cannot replicate.

The result, in Atkin's words: a wine that is "absolutely exceptional and world-class."

A Timeline of Excellence

What separates Per Se Uní del Bonnesant from other acclaimed Argentine wines is not a single exceptional vintage. It is consistency at the absolute limit of quality — a track record that places it alongside the great monopoles of Burgundy and the legendary single-vineyard bottlings of Barolo.

2016 — First separated harvest. Bonomi and Del Popolo recognize the parcel is unlike anything else in the vineyard.

2019 — 100 points. The first perfect score Tim Atkin ever awarded to an Argentine wine. A historic moment for the country's viticulture.

2021 — 98 points. Confirmation that 2019 was not an anomaly.

2023 — 99 points. One point from perfection. The vineyard's consistency becomes undeniable.

2024 — 100 points. A second perfect score. The vineyard joins the rarest company in the wine world.

Five vintages presented. Two perfect scores. Never below 98 points.

For context: the wines of Romanée-Conti, Petrus, and Sassicaia don't always score 98+. The fact that a 0.3-hectare hillside in Mendoza maintains this level of consistency is, by any objective measure, one of the most remarkable achievements in New World wine history.

What This Means for Argentine Wine

The perfect score for Per Se Uní del Bonnesant 2024 is not just a milestone for one wine or one producer. It is a signal about where Argentine viticulture stands in 2026.

Argentina's wine industry faces real pressures — falling domestic consumption, export challenges, inflation. But the wines coming out of Gualtallary, Paraje Altamira, and the high-altitude zones of Salta tell a different story: a story of quality that has never been higher, of terroir being understood with a precision that rivals the Old World's greatest appellations.

The ceiling is still rising.

Per Se Uní del Bonnesant is proof that a 312-vine hillside in the Andes can produce something the world has no better answer to. That is the Argentine wine story in 2026 — not the volume, not the exports, but the altitude, the limestone, and the obsession.

 
Explore the Terroir Behind the Score

Want to understand the landscape that produces wines like Per Se Uní del Bonnesant? Explore Gualtallary and the Uco Valley on our interactive 3D wine map — the only map of its kind, with 92 venues across Argentina's top wine regions.

Read our complete guide to Gualtallary — the sub-zone redefining what Argentine Malbec can be.