$ 25.99 at Crush Wine & Spirits in Bryant, Arkansas (AR)
93 points – James Suckling
91 points – The Wine Advocate
90 points – Wine & Spirits
100% Malbec. Grapes from three high-elevation vineyards, Lunlunta, El Cepillo, and Gualtallary. Aged in barrel for 12 months. A combination of first, second, and third used barrels are selected for aging.
Black and blue fruit flavors with herbal and floral notes. Full body with noticeable acidity and minerality on the palette. Long finish.
Four generations have run this winery with the most significant actions taken by the current manager, Laura Catena and her father before her, Nicolás Catena Zapata. Together their advances since the 1960s put Catena at the forefront of the Argentina wine industry’s development, particularly with their success of showing the quality that the Malbec grape could produce.
Fifty years after the original French Malbec vines were planted in Argentina in 1852, Italian immigrant, Nicola Catena, planted his first Malbec vineyard in Mendoza creating Bodega Catena Zapata in 1902. Although Malbec had been merely a blending grape in Bordeaux, Nicola thought that the grape would show its full splendor in the Argentine Andes. His dream would not materialize until almost a century later.
Nicola’s eldest son, Domingo, took the winery to its next stage. He built the Catena business to become one of the largest vineyard holders in Mendoza. He also believed that Argentine Malbec could make a world-class wine that could reach the level of Bordeaux wines particularly if grapes were sourced from the Uco Valley. Unfortunately, the Argentine economy’s plunge beginning in the 1960s halted any further progress for the winery. Nicolás, in the meantime, earned his PhD in economics.
As the economic struggle in Argentina continued for the next two decades, Nicolás took the reins of the winery with his main focus on expanding distribution throughout the country. He had to put his winery responsibilities on hold, however, in the early 1980s when he got an opportunity to become a visiting scholar of economics at the University of California Berkeley. During his free time, he visited the California wineries that were making their mark as world class winemakers. This exposure to what California had achieved, inspired him to return to Mendoza with a vision to improved Argentine wines with the methods he learned in California.
On his return to Argentina, Nicolás boldly sold his bulk wine company and kept only the fine wine branch of the winery. This was considered one of the first steps in laying the groundwork for Argentina’s preeminence on the world’s wine stage. By the 1990s, Nicolás sought out the best places to plant vineyards in Mendoza. Looking for cooler climate sights, he settled on Gualtallary Alto starting with his first vineyard there that he named Adrianna after his youngest daughter. The first successes were with Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay planted in this area. Once he achieved that hurdle, he focused on Malbec with his first Malbec vintage in 1994. His initial vintage of Malbec was a pivotal success. Robert Parker gave it a great review. Also the Wall Street Journal ranked it as Argentina’s number one Malbec in its first feature on Malbec.
By 1995, Nicolás’s daughter, Dr. Laura Catena, joined him at the family winery and has continued moving Bodega Catena Zapata forward. She established the Catena Institute of Wine which has played a key role in conducting the research that has allowed Argentina to make wines that can stand with the best in the world and to advance the country’s winemaking regions. She is now the managing director of the winery and is one of the leading ambassadors of Argentine wine.
Winemaker Alejandro Vigil has been a helpful force at Catena in the last two decades. With his extensive viticultural and enology training, he joined the winery in 2002 as head of the research department and rose to become the winemaking director in 2007. By the end of his first decade at Catena, he was producing wines that were receiving 95+ point ratings from the top publications such as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, and Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar.
