{"id":20577,"date":"2014-09-17T08:42:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T12:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/?p=20577"},"modified":"2014-09-17T09:04:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T13:04:02","slug":"argentina-wine-malbec-catena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/argentina-wine-malbec-catena\/","title":{"rendered":"First Argentine Wine: Malbec Calling Catena"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"barrel<\/a>Continued from Part 1 of Catena Wine<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

That robust work ethic has been in the Catena family for generations. In 1898, his grandfather Nicola left a small village in Sicily for Argentina.<\/p>\n

He started planting vines in 1902 and raised a family. His eldest son, Domingo, married Angelica Zapata, a daughter of a large land owner, increasing the family\u2019s holdings.<\/p>\n

By 1973, the winery had become the country\u2019s largest producer of cheap wines, pumping out 240 million bottles a year.<\/p>\n

Nicol\u00e1s, the son of Domingo and Angelica, was a brilliant boy and finished high school at 15. At the request of his father, he delayed university to work in the vineyard.<\/p>\n

After several years, he continued his education, eventually earning a PhD in agricultural economics from Argentina\u2019s University of Cuyo and then a master\u2019s degree in economics from Columbia University.<\/p>\n

But sadly, in 1963, his mother and grandfather were killed in a car crash. Nicol\u00e1s returned home to help his father run the winery, postponing a doctorate at Chicago University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked side by side with my father. I was too young and too arrogant then to learn anything\u2014but at least I knew I was arrogant,\u201d he says smiling.<\/p>\n

\"Vine<\/a>Eventually, when the winery stabilized, young Nicol\u00e1s longed to go back to academia, despite his love for the family business and making wine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pull of the intellectual life has always been as strong as the entrepreneurial for me. I have tried all my life to resolve that. Perhaps this is why I\u2019ve always felt like two people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1982, he accepted a post as visiting professor of agricultural economics at the University of California at Berkley.<\/p>\n

The academic environment was stimulating: his colleagues won six Nobel prizes while he was there. He also enjoyed discussing wine matters with professors in the viticultural program.<\/p>\n

One weekend, he and his wife Elaina drove up to Napa Valley and toured the Robert Mondavi winery. Much later, he learned that his grandfather and Mondavi\u2019s father had lived only fifteen miles apart in Sicily, though they never knew each other.<\/p>\n

\"Chardonnay\"<\/a>Catena Wine Reviews and Ratings<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Nicol\u00e1s admired both the quality of the wines and the energy of the Mondavi people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the shock of the freshness and the fruit in the wine, its balance and complexity,\u201d he says tilting his head slowly to one side and then the other as though considering the visit from different angles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, there\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t do this in Mendoza. That visit opened my eyes to the fact that a New World country could compete with Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that, Nicol\u00e1s and Elaina spent most weekends visiting Californian wineries. When they returned to Argentina in 1992, he took over the winery and sold all the family\u2019s vineyards except for the original Bodega Esmeralda, planted by his grandfather.<\/p>\n

He invested in advanced computer and robot technology as well as stainless-steel tanks and French oak barrels. He also convinced Paul Hobbs, a respected Sonoma winemaker, to work with him during the harvest.<\/p>\n

Since Argentina lies south of the equator, the grapes are picked from January to April, conveniently off-season for Hobbs.<\/p>\n

\"Grapes\"<\/a>Nicol\u00e1s planted Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, believing (like many others) that these two grapes alone defined wine quality internationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made the same mistake as the Californians: I tried to imitate France in order to beat them,\u201d he admits quietly.<\/p>\n

It was his father who convinced him to consider Malbec, which the senior Catena believed to be the country\u2019s patriotic grape, making it in the popular oxidized style that Nicol\u00e1s calls the \u201csherry approach to winemaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malbec<\/strong><\/a> got no respect in fine wine circles, the stuntman-double of brute strength but no subtlety. Its only role was to beef up the color, alcohol, and tannin in more aristocratic Cabernet blends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved my father very much, so in order to please him, I started a little project on Malbec,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

Read Part 3 of Argentine Wine<\/a> …
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part 1 of Catena Wine That robust work ethic has been in the Catena family for generations. In 1898, his grandfather Nicola left a small village in Sicily for Argentina. He started planting vines in 1902 and raised a family. His eldest son, Domingo, married Angelica Zapata, a daughter of a large land owner, increasing the family\u2019s holdings. By 1973, the winery had become the country\u2019s largest producer of cheap wines, pumping out 240 million bottles a year. Nicol\u00e1s, the son of Domingo and Angelica, was a brilliant boy and finished high school at 15. At the request […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[371,214,946,341,369,372,24,3,342,1092],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argentina-wine","category-cabernet-sauvignon","category-chardonnay","category-making-wine","category-malbec-wine","category-red-wine","category-wine-travel-to-wine-regions","category-wine-articles","category-winemakers","category-winemaking"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20577"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20627,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20577\/revisions\/20627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}