Catena Zapata
Adrianna River Stones Malbec
Mendoza
2017

The producer

Catena was founded in 1902, in Lujan de Cuyo, Mendoza, yet the company’s modern history starts in the late 1960s, when Nicolas Catena joins his father and grandfather. The first vintage made by Nicolas was the 1990 – inspired by Bordeaux and Napa Valley – and was a Cabernet Sauvignon blended with a little Malbec and from the winery’s best barrels. 

Nicolas’ vision from the start was to make rich and unique wines that were true to the terroir they come from, while continually seeking out new and better vineyards for Malbec, on his way being one of the pioneers in discovering extreme high-altitude terroirs in Andean foothills of Mendoza. Nicolas’ daughter Laura Catena has done several studies with the Catena Institute which has shown that higher altitude wines had significantly higher levels of tannins (likely developed by the vines to shield the seeds from the sun).

The winemaking style is Californian-French with a focus on fresh fruit flavours and added complexity by use of traditional French oak barrels. The Adrianna vineyard is Catena’s most famous and named after Nicolas’ youngest daughter. Located in the district of Gualtallary within the region of Tupungato at almost 1,500 feet elevation, it was planted in 1992 and has alluvial gravelly soil with limestone topsoil.

Larry Stone from the James Beard Foundation trustee says of Nicolas Catena: “he is a figure of Argentina of the stature of Robert Mondavi in Napa and Angelo Gaja in Piedmont. He inspired an entire region to strive for higher quality by his successful exploration of high-altitude vineyards.”

Catena Zapata focuses mainly on very quality Malbec including several special cuvees from individual vineyards. They also produce a superb Cabernet Malbec blend as well as some excellent Chardonnay. In short Catena Zapata has an astonishing range of individual vineyards worthy of consideration within their holdings.

The wine

The “River Stones” Cuvee takes its name from a small 2.6-hectare parcel of the Adrianna vineyard which – at 1,366 meters elevation – is the site of an ancient riverbed and covered in white stones.  Fermentation takes place in oak barriques and is followed by ageing for 20 months in barrel. An extremely aromatic, pure and red berry/floral scented wine, with smooth tannins, and long velvety texture.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.