2015 Bodega Catena Zapata pre-shipment offer

19 Sep 2018

Bodega Catena Zapata: an understanding of terroir

Argentina's highest achievement

'Nicolás Catena Zapata is justly credited with putting Argentinean wines on the world map-by the best expedient of focusing entirely on quality' - Jancis Robinson

Malbec as Burgundy? Stephen Tanzer of Vinous compares the Adrianna Mundus Bacillus Terrae to top Vosne-Romanée and he tastes a lot of the latter. This is 100% Malbec of the greatest finesse, ageability, intensity, and complexity. Its small (1.4 hectares), unique 5,000-foot-high, limestone-rich terroir also supports high levels of rhizobacteria. This is the vector for the vine to absorb high levels of available nutrients. If you farm chemically you kill the rhizobacteria off, so the vines aren't able to take in the minerals so well and don't transmit the terroir.

For the Nicolás Catena Zapata 2015 the fruit is sourced from a variety of plots between 3-5,000 feet altitude and a variety of soils, with 83% Cabernet Sauvignon and 17% Malbec. It's fermented in a mix of new and second-fill barrels, both barrique and foudre and including 10% of ripe stems for freshness. To give you an idea of the attention to detail here, the cuvée is made up of 210 separate micro-vinifications from the various lots. That's traceability. And it enables multiple passes through the vineyards to be handled individually. This is a fabulous expression of the high Andes.

There's a lot more to Catena than meets the eye. They're famous, popular and garner many high scores for all their wines and you might expect them to be volume rather than quality-driven. Nothing could be further than the truth. Although as the family will tell you, the luck of finding their best vineyards played a huge part in their success, from that luck and an enormous amount of hard work, Cistercian monk-like research and constant striving for quality, come wines that achieve the pinnacles of quality. These two amazing bottlings stand comparison with the best the world can offer. /CW

Offered subject to remaining unsold; for shipment Spring 2019