{"id":20589,"date":"2014-09-17T08:36:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T12:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/?p=20589"},"modified":"2014-09-17T09:04:28","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T13:04:28","slug":"argentina-wine-cabernet-malbec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/argentina-wine-cabernet-malbec\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina’s Wine Visionary Sees the Future Rooted in the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u00068.3fc2\"<\/a>Continued from Part 4 of Argentine Wine<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The 1982 Falklands War with Britain also didn\u2019t help the economy or exports. Then there was hyper-inflation that exceeded 3,000 percent a month, which discouraged foreign investment.<\/p>\n

Vintners made up for the lost revenue by producing high volumes of poor-quality wines that smelled like bananas rotting in an attic.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, neighboring Chile\u2019s economy was much more stable and the country was already producing more wine than it could consume, so it was focused on export in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Chile took advantage of this to position itself at the very low end of the market\u2014bottles of wine under $10. (Ironically, Chile has struggled ever since to get up out of that category.)<\/p>\n

\"Chardonnay\"<\/a>Argentina started to focus on exports in the 1990s when government subsidies dried up for volume production and there were economic incentives to rip out inferior vines.<\/p>\n

\"2<\/a>How did all this affect Nicol\u00e1s Catena? In 1991, he shipped his first vintage to the United States and faced the dilemma of how to price his wines.<\/p>\n

At that time, the most expensive Argentine wines sold in the U.S. cost $4 and those from Chile were $6.<\/p>\n

Nicol\u00e1s made the gutsy move to price his Chardonnay above the vinous ghetto at $13 and his Cabernet Sauvignon at $15.<\/p>\n

Fellow producers told him he was crazy, but word of the wine\u2019s quality spread and he sold the entire vintage\u2019s production in two months. Still, it took another five years before the North American market fully accepted the Catena wines as part of that price segment.<\/p>\n

\"Cantena<\/a>I ask him which wines are the best in the world today. However, the professor dodges the question with a theoretical explanation:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you accept that the dynamics of the market economy reflect the value judgments of its participants, then the best wine is the most expensive one.\u201d<\/p>\n

And do critics influence which wines the market deems best?<\/p>\n

\u201cCritics increase market efficiency, but the consumer ultimately decides which is the best wine\u2014and who is the best critic,\u201d he says smiling at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am market-driven: I make wines that please people. If people did not like my wines, I would change them,\u201d he says. The multi-millionaire businessman is back.<\/p>\n

Warming to his theme, he tells me that he believes that wine allows people to show their affective side.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot prove this theory of course,\u201d he says earnestly, raising a finger. \u201cBut I have seen it many times.<\/p>\n

When you bring out a bottle of wine, something in your emotional, sensing nature is revealed. This is why people often drink wine with those they are fond of.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it happens, I am terribly fond of this Catena Zapata Malbec<\/strong><\/a>. It floods my senses with a wanton perfume of violets and black plums.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an unabashed Latin fire in the glass with a lick of French polish.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still scaling the Andes for cooler sites, taking vines to the very limit of cultivation,\u201d Nicol\u00e1s says, his eyes moving up the mountains in front of us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not producing our finest wines yet. That challenge is always ahead of us\u2014we are always pursuing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Zapata\"<\/a>Catena Wine Reviews and Ratings<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part 4 of Argentine Wine The 1982 Falklands War with Britain also didn\u2019t help the economy or exports. Then there was hyper-inflation that exceeded 3,000 percent a month, which discouraged foreign investment. Vintners made up for the lost revenue by producing high volumes of poor-quality wines that smelled like bananas rotting in an attic. Meanwhile, neighboring Chile\u2019s economy was much more stable and the country was already producing more wine than it could consume, so it was focused on export in the 1980s. Chile took advantage of this to position itself at the very low end of the […]<\/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":[371,113,214,946,293,12,319,341,369,384,372,24,3,342,1092],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argentina-wine","category-best-wines","category-cabernet-sauvignon","category-chardonnay","category-chile-wine","category-grapes-regions","category-learn-wine","category-making-wine","category-malbec-wine","category-price-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\/20589","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=20589"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20651,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20589\/revisions\/20651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}