Why it matters
The producer
Susana Balbo was Argentina’s first female winemaker before founding her own project in 1999. José and Ana Balbo are now part of the business, while Susana still tastes wines from barrel and decides their eventual allocation. That hands-on barrel work connects the estate’s Mendoza base to bottles such as the Signature White Blend, where the final balance of fruit, oak and texture is decided before release.
Balbo founded this project after a career that also included becoming the first female president of Wines of Argentina, a position to which she was elected three times. The 1999 start matters in the glass because it created a house able to bring its own fruit, barrel decisions and family involvement into one range. José and Ana’s place in the company carries that work forward from the Agrelo winery into wines that move between oak-aged white and stainless-steel rosé.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
The estate structure joins Agrelo, where the winery stands, with Gualtallary; the Signature White Blend adds a third named Mendoza location through its fruit from Paraje Altamira in the Uco Valley. Rather than treating Cuyo as one undifferentiated source, the bottle names a particular origin for its three-grape blend. The result is a white whose floral and citrus-led fruit is shaped by both its vineyard address and five months in barrel.
That leaves the bottle, rather than an unsupported ground story, as the useful guide: Paraje Altamira is named on the 2025 Signature White Blend, while the wine’s French-oak ageing supplies the documented textural counterweight to its aromatic varieties.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
In a 2022 interview, Balbo said that all the company’s vineyards were organic. The statement does not establish a current certification or a detailed farming programme, but it places vineyard care alongside a cellar approach built on tasting each barrel and allocating it accordingly. Balbo has also argued for subtly toasted wood and shorter ageing periods; in the Signature White Blend, five months of French oak gives fruit and acidity room to remain present instead of being covered by heavy oak flavour.
Wines to know
The range in view
The documented range shows two distinct cellar routes. The 2025 Susana Balbo Signature White Blend is 50% Torrontés, 25% Sauvignon Blanc and 25% Semillón, from Paraje Altamira, and ages for five months in French oak: 60% new barrels and 40% second-use. Torrontés brings floral fruit, Sauvignon Blanc brings citrus and acidity, and Semillón broadens the body; the oak adds spice and a rounded texture through the middle of the palate.
The rosé sits on a different track, made in stainless steel rather than barrel. That contrast makes the range easy to read: the white is built around a three-grape blend, site and measured oak, while the rosé keeps its vinification away from wood. These are two different ways of carrying fruit into a dry wine, rather than a claim of a complete portfolio or a fixed hierarchy.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Choose the 2025 Susana Balbo Signature White Blend first. It puts three grapes, a named Uco Valley origin and a specific barrel programme into one bottle: 50% Torrontés, 25% Sauvignon Blanc and 25% Semillón from Paraje Altamira, aged five months in French oak. Floral fruit and citrus meet a textured, lightly spicy palate, while acidity carries the wine through a dry finish. It is the clearest single bottle for seeing how the house combines aromatic white grapes with barrel ageing.