Meet the Family Behind La VidA, Mendoza’s MICHELIN-Starred Dining Experience

Meet the Family Behind La VidA, Mendoza’s MICHELIN-Starred Dining Experience

For more than four decades, Susana Balbo has helped shape the international reputation of Argentine wine, establishing a legacy that now extends beyond the vineyard into a broader world of hospitality and gastronomy. Through Susana Balbo Hotels, the family is exploring how its connection to Mendoza can be expressed through a different kind of experience, bringing together accommodation, dining and a sense of place in one of Argentina’s most celebrated wine regions.

A defining address within this portfolio is SB Winemaker’s House & Spa Suites, whose restaurant, La VidA, received its first MICHELIN Star in the 2026 Guide. The recognition marks an important milestone for the family’s growing hospitality business, bringing further international attention to its approach to gastronomy and the wider experience of Mendoza.

With the hospitality portfolio continuing to develop, the Susana Balbo name is entering a new phase, building on an established wine legacy while finding new ways to engage with Mendoza’s landscape, culture and culinary identity.

We spoke to Susana Balbo and her daughter, Ana Balbo, about the evolution of the family business, the thinking behind their approach to hospitality, and how they are bringing the Susana Balbo story to a new audience.

Firstly, congratulations on La VidA receiving its first MICHELIN Star, it is a significant new milestone. What does that recognition mean for the wider business and its international positioning? The MICHELIN Star is an important recognition not only for La VidA, but for the evolution of the Susana Balbo family’s vision beyond wine. Susana spent more than four decades establishing a reputation for Argentine wine internationally, and today we are building on that legacy through gastronomy, hospitality and wellness. To have La VidA recognized alongside Osadía de Crear, which retained both its MICHELIN Green Star and Recommended distinction, validates the idea that Mendoza can be experienced through many different expressions of the family’s philosophy. For us, the recognition is less about the accolade itself and more about what it represents: the opportunity to introduce international travelers to Mendoza through a deeply personal, family-led experience that connects wine, food, design, wellness and a strong sense of place.

We’re seeing luxury travellers increasingly willing to travel further for experiences they cannot easily find elsewhere. What do you think makes Mendoza, and the combination of SB Winemaker’s House and La VidA, worth the journey for today’s luxury traveller? Mendoza offers a destination where the landscape, culture, food and wine are all deeply connected. You can spend the morning among vineyards with the Andes as a backdrop, experience the winemaking process firsthand, and then return to an intimate hotel where that same philosophy continues through gastronomy, art and wellness. At SB Winemaker’s House & Spa Suites, we are able to make that experience highly personal because of the scale of the property. With just seven suites, guests are not simply visiting a hotel and restaurant; they are entering the world that our family has spent generations building. La VidA takes that even further, translating the winemaking process itself into a seven-course dining experience that tells a story along the way. It is that combination of access, intimacy and authenticity that makes the journey to Mendoza worthwhile.

Wine is such an important part of the Susana Balbo heritage. How does that heritage come through at La VidA, and is there a particular dish, wine or part of the experience that you feel best captures what you are trying to create for guests? Wine is the foundation of everything we do, but at La VidA we wanted guests to experience wine as a broader story rather than simply something in the glass. The seven-course winemaker-driven menu follows the stages of winemaking through Terroir, Harvest, Fermentation, Extraction, Aging, Blend and Expression, so the meal becomes a journey through the process that has defined our family for more than 40 years. At the same time, many of the dishes reinterpret traditional flavors and dishes from Argentine culture, bringing a sense of familiarity and heritage into a contemporary gastronomic experience. The private Chef’s Table, particularly when paired with wines from Susana’s personal library, is perhaps the clearest expression of that idea. Guests can taste historic vintages that are no longer commercially available while experiencing the food and hearing directly from the chef about the thinking behind each course. It creates a connection between the past and present that is very representative of our family. Ultimately, we want guests to understand wine not simply as a beverage, but as an experience that connects landscape, culture, food, history and people.

SB Winemaker’s House & Spa Suites is deliberately intimate, with just seven suites. What does that scale allow you to do for guests that would be much harder to achieve in a larger luxury hotel? Seven suites allows us to be incredibly personal and intentional with the guest experience. Rather than creating a standardized luxury hotel experience, we can get to know each guest and understand what they are interested in, whether that is wine, gastronomy, wellness, art, nature or exploring Mendoza. The property was designed to feel more like a private estate than a traditional hotel, and that intimacy allows our team to create experiences around the individual. Guests can move from a wine tasting to a Chef’s Table dinner, an Argentine cooking or grilling experience, a wellness treatment or an excursion through Mendoza without feeling as though they are moving between separate parts of a large resort. That sense of continuity is important to us because we want every element of the stay to feel connected and considered.

The business has grown to include hospitality, gastronomy and wellness alongside the wine brand. What made you want to explore these different sides of the business, and how do you see them coming together? Wine was my mother’s dream, and gastronomy and hospitality have become my own. That generational evolution has been a very natural part of the story. Wine has always been about more than what is in the bottle. It is about land, food, culture, people, conversation and the moments that happen around a table. Hospitality gives us the opportunity to share that entire world with guests rather than giving them only one piece of it. I also think the energy and vision of the second generation has created an opportunity to expand the family’s philosophy in new directions. The hotel, restaurants and wellness experiences are natural extensions of the wine business because they allow us to tell the same story through different senses. A guest can experience the landscape through a vineyard visit, taste it through the cuisine, understand our winemaking philosophy through a tasting, and then slow down through wellness. It is about continuing what my mother created while bringing our own passions, perspectives and ideas to the next chapter.

Susana, you were a pioneer in Argentina’s wine industry, and now the next generation is becoming increasingly involved in the business. How does it feel to see Ana helping shape the next chapter of what you started ? It is incredibly meaningful to see Ana shaping the next chapter because she brings a different perspective while still understanding the values that have always been at the heart of our family. When I began my career, my focus was on proving what Argentine wine, and particularly Argentine women in wine, could achieve internationally. Ana is taking that foundation and asking a new question: how can we invite people into our world and allow them to experience the culture, hospitality and philosophy behind the wine?

You are developing Susana Balbo Mountain Lodge Villas & Spa in the Uco Valley. What opportunity do you see in expanding the portfolio, and how will it complement the Winemaker’s House? The Mountain Lodge gives us an opportunity to introduce guests to another side of Mendoza and another dimension of the Susana Balbo story. SB Winemaker’s House & Spa Suites is intentionally intimate and residential, with a strong connection to the family and our roots in wine. The Mountain Lodge will bring that same philosophy into the high-altitude landscape of San Pablo in the Uco Valley, surrounded by a 91-acre vineyard estate. Rather than duplicating SB Winemaker’s House & Spa Suites, the two properties will offer complementary experiences. Together, they will allow guests to experience different landscapes, terroirs and rhythms within Mendoza while maintaining the same level of personalization and connection to wine, nature, gastronomy and wellness. We have also been very intentional about developing the branding and storytelling for both properties so that, while each has its own identity and sense of place, they are clearly connected to the broader Susana Balbo philosophy. The goal is to create two distinct expressions of the same family story.

As the hospitality side of the business continues to grow, what aspects of the original Susana Balbo philosophy are non-negotiable? There are several pillars that are fundamental to everything we do. The first is quality, a commitment to excellence in every detail, from our wines and ingredients to our service and the experiences we create. The second is calidez, which translates to warmth. For us, luxury should never feel cold or impersonal. We want our guests to feel genuinely welcomed, cared for and connected to the people and place around them. The third is creating a memorable experience. We want people to leave with more than beautiful photographs or a list of things they have done; we want them to leave with emotions and memories that stay with them. There is also an important feminine sensibility that runs through everything we do at Susana Balbo. It is reflected in the way we approach hospitality, attention to detail, beauty, care and connection. As the business evolves, these principles remain non-negotiable because they are what make everything we create unmistakably Susana Balbo.

Finally, when you look at the business today, with wine, hospitality, gastronomy and wellness all forming part of the wider story, what do you hope the next chapter of Susana Balbo will look like? I hope the next chapter continues to be defined by curiosity, evolution and family. Susana built an extraordinary foundation through wine, and now we have the opportunity to expand that legacy in ways that allow people to experience Mendoza more completely. For us, wine will always be understood as an experience — something that connects people to a place, its landscape, culture, food and history. We also believe that luxury is not simply about beautiful spaces or exceptional products. It is our ability to create lasting memories and, most importantly, emotions. We want to continue creating places and experiences that feel deeply connected to Argentina while being relevant to an international luxury traveler. Most importantly, we want the business to remain family-driven and personal as it grows. The goal is not simply to build a larger portfolio, but to create meaningful experiences that give guests a deeper understanding of Mendoza, our culture and the values that have guided the Susana Balbo family for generations.

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