2016 Malbec Argentino

I devoted nearly a full day to tasting at the Catena Zapata winery in Agrelo as Argentina’s #1 producer offers excellent to otherworldly wines at a range of price points—and that’s not even including the superb wines made by Nicolas Catena’s daughter Laura and son Ernesto, and the Bodega Aleanna label of his own multi-talented winemaker Alejandro Vigil. Before we tasted the Catena Chardonnays from vintage 2017, Vigil told me that this growing season began with a very wet September and October (more than 300 millimeters of rain) but that the period from December through about March 20 was very dry, as well as about 2 degrees C. lower than normal. The ultimate crop level in '17 was reduced substantially by frost on November 22, 2016, which Vigil said was more important in the Uco Valley in general than it was farther north (i.e., closer to the winery in Agrelo). Chardonnay and Malbec were hit especially hard, and crop levels were almost similar to those of 2016, another short year. Like many of his colleagues in Mendoza, Vigil considers 2018 to be an even better vintage than ’17, as “the ripening process and the decline in acidity were very slow and even.”

A key to the high quality of a number of Catena’s top wines is their fabulous Adrianna vineyard in Gualtallary, which Nicolás Catena began to plant in 1992. At the time, Catena was seeking to purchase a high–altitude site in the coolest location that he thought could ripen its fruit. This vineyard ranges from Winkler Category I to II depending on growing season conditions, and its position and gravel and calcium carbonate soils have already produced exceptional, mineral-driven wines from Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay. The blazing sunshine at this altitude thickens the grape skins, resulting in higher polyphenol and tannin levels, but the coolness of the site allows the grapes to retain acidity and to ripen at moderate sugar levels.

Vigil, not surprisingly, considers 2016 to be a much better year for higher vineyards; he’s particularly excited about the Catena wines from Adrianna Vineyard in Gualtallary (which are on very well-drained soil of volcanic origin) but not quite as high on those from nearby Altamira, where there was a bit more rain. And 2016 was a particularly challenging year for the company’s 110 hectares of vines planted around the estate in Agrelo, as the soil here is clay-based and did not do well in the damp conditions of 2016. Vigil also prefers wines from the southern reaches of Mendoza (i.e., the Uco Valley) in vintage 2015, a season he describes as warmer than 2016 but with similar temperatures in March and April, and with less rain during the harvest period than in 2016.

Incidentally, Vigil is a big fan of Cabernet in Argentina, including Cabernet Franc. He produces a series of vineyard-designated Cabernet Francs under his own Bodega Aleanna label that are the best in Argentina, and he also typically adds tiny percentage of this variety to Catena’s top Malbecs to add another dimension to these wines. Vigil told me that Catena owns 20 of the 900 hectares of Cabernet Franc planted in Argentina. This number is a drop in the bucket compared to the 15,000 hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon and the 42,000 of Malbec. But Vigil points out that Cabernet Sauvignon plantings are going down every year. “The problem is the popularity of Malbec,” he said.