Regional info.

Nicolas Catena was the third generation of his family to make wine in Mendoza but the first to see the potential in planting higher and higher vineyards in search of cool climate sites ideal for the production of fine wine. Today, over a decade on from the first Catena Malbec in 1994, he works with his daughter Laura (who improbably juggles her work as an ER surgeon in San Francisco with the family business) in their relentless pursuit of the finest possible quality wines from their unique vineyard sites.

From the vineyard to the winery, the Alamos wines are made to emphasize varietal fruit character. The cool evening temperatures in Catena's high altitude vineyards allow for prolonged hang time, preserving the fruit's full spectrum of aromas and flavours.

At the winery, the grapes are gently destemmed, fermentation temperatures are carefully controlled and two to four year old barrels are used to age the wines.

With more than 392.484 acre of vineyards, Mendoza is Argentina's foremost wine-producing Province. In fact it is in this Province where more than 80% of all Argentine wine is manufactured. In Mendoza, today we find a quality oriented industry under constant development and with a focus on the achievement of the best terroir-variety relationships possible. Certainly, Mendoza features an enviable array of grape varieties, given the Province ´s considerable altitude and range: from 1640 to 4921 ft above sea level. Mendoza ´s basic viticultural geography can be divided into three large oases: one in the North, on the basin of the Mendoza and Tunuyan Rivers, one in the Center, and one in the South, washed by the Diamante and Atuel Rivers. By carefully studying the Province ´s territory, however, one can discover a multiplicity of features distributed among a number of highly differentiated terroirs, each terroir having its own altitude and soil characteristics. These terroirs, coupled with Mendoza's protracted, dry and mild-weathered fall season, enable wine producers and enologists to materialize the dream of producing wines of their own design - harvest decisions being made based on their desired degrees of grape maturity.

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