Laura and Nicolas Catena

From Luis Gutierez
Wine Advocate #212, April 2014

"Catena is almost equivalent to Argentine quality wine, as Nicolas Catena was the true pioneer and is still the most important wine personality in Argentina. Bodega Catena Zapata has been owned by the Catena family since 1902. Of course I paid a lot of attention to their wines and I tasted with Laura Catena and winemaker Alejandro Vigil both in Madrid and Mendoza, visited their vineyards in Gualtallary and jumped into different pits in the soil to see the differences in terroir. I was able to discuss multiple topics (including Sherry wine, as it seems to be one of his passions) with Nicolas Catena, which was a real pleasure.

They are so forward thinking and smart as they are still at the head of quality wines in the country, doing amazing research and never resting on their laurels. Alejandro Vigil is one of the most passionate and intuitive winemakers on Earth, and he's also completely crazy about wine, always wanting to experiment, to question the established ideas and to learn more. We need more of these champions in the wine world. The result can be no other than superb wines, with some groundbreaking whites that could compete with the finest white Burgundies (I'd love to do a blind tasting one day) and the most amazing Malbecs you can think of, and everything in between.

To explain some of the many things I saw and learned from them, one of the main objectives is to improve the knowledge of their vineyards, to break the macro-units of terroir into smaller parts, smaller zones, and even vineyards, or even parts of vineyards. This allows them to do different viticulture, watering, harvesting and vinification even to a few rows of vines. For one given vineyard they might have 200 different lots, which is not a picture of the terroir, but a FILM of the terroir, which gives the wines enormous complexity and for them it creates an even higher complexity, for the blends! The result of this way of working is hundreds (or was it thousands? I think it was.) of micro-vinifications in every vintage. The amazing blending skills cannot then be forgotten.

Nicolas Catena has three offspring: Laura, Ernesto and Adrianna. Laura is a doctor in San Francisco but is already at the helm of the family winery. She has time to travel the world showing their wines and to write books about Argentine wine. Ernesto has different projects and is enchanted by biodynamic practices. Adrianna is the youngest, still studying in the UK, but already involved, as she shares ownership with Alejandro Vigil in the Aleanna winery (also included in this report). Various vineyards are named after members of the Catena family. If we use Laura as the pivotal point, Angelica was her grandmother, and Nicasia was the mother of Angelica, so she was Laura Catena's great-grandmother. Both Nicasia and Angelica are names of vineyards you might see on their labels. Adrianna Vineyard is, of course, named after Nicolas' younger daughter and was the first vineyard ever planted in Gualtallary. Doctor Nicolas Catena told me that he planted there out of fluke and then they realized he had discovered a treasure of a place, but I believe that what he calls "fluke" is really intuition. Coincidences like that do not really exist, you know. Gualtallary is nowadays recognized as one of the highest potential wine regions, not only in Mendoza, but in the whole of Argentina.

Finally, let's take a simplified look at the different ranges of wines before I go into each individual wine: the Catena range is a blend of high altitude estate vineyards. The Catena Alta range is what they call a row selection in the Catena family vineyards. The Catena Zapata wines are the top of the range, and they are a plant-by-plant selection from their vineyards. It might sound crazy (and it probably is), but that's what it is."