Le Paradis
2018
Armed with the vision of elevating Catena and Argentine wines to stand with the best in the world, Catena’s high standard of excellence has brought them much acclaim over the years, for their wines and for their work. Most recently, Nicolás Catena Zapata was the recipient of Wine Enthusiast’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, while his daughter Laura Catena, fourth generation vintner, as well as physician and author, has been called “the face of Argentine wine” and was awarded 2022...
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This cool climate vineyard that belongs to Laura and her sister Adrianna Catena feels like paradise itself to Laura. It is lined by trees and fruit orchards, with majestic views of the Andes. Inside the 12 Hectare vineyard, there is a little house with two tiny bedrooms and a kitchen, where Laura dreams of spending a whole month reading books - Laura’s version of paradise. The little house is affectionately named Château Laura.
High intensity of mineral elements such as chalk, with some reduction and herbal notes. A few minutes after opening, berry aromatics appear. Layered and every-increasing aromas. Subtle, integrated oak. High acidity. Fine tannins.
A little more color than the Grand Pere and Le Savante bottlings, but it remains really transparent. A touch of grilled grapefruit, wet moss, minerals and iron. Beguilingly full on the palate. The trick here is the texture and the mineral tension that offers expansion. Really fine, transparent and long, with a little more tautness and structure.
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Seductive, beautifully scented and nuanced, with fascinating aromas of smoky raspberries, thyme, blood orange, sous-bois and sea urchins. There’s a faint caramel undertone, too. This is a round, full-bodied, extremely serious and tense pinot with taut, chalky tannins. Savory, complex and transparent. It keeps going for minutes. Incredibly attractive now, but you can lay it down for 5-7 years, to wait for more complexity coming ahead. Mind-blowing!
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The nose of the 2020 Le Paradis Pinot Noir shows tons of orange peel and flowers, denoting freshness and good ripeness with 13.5% alcohol. It's a very good and impressive performance of a warm year in a cold place at 1,500 meters above sea level. The plot was planted with Dijon clones on sandy shallow soils and then pure limestone. The grapes fermented with 80% full clusters and had short macerations, and the wine matured in used 500-liter barrels that were used before for the White Bones and White Stones from Catena. It's varietal, showy and a bit spicy with a very solid and seamless palate. It finishes with a strong chalky sensation. 1,728 bottles were filled in December 2021.
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A very complex, cerebral pinot noir that has the kind of subtle layering that you find in wines from the Grand Cru sites on the Côte d’Or. The violets, cherries, cassis, blueberries and wild red fruit are all interwoven with a thread of spicy earthy, undergrowth. The palate has fine layered build and such smooth creamy tannins. The finish runs deep, very fluid and long. The tannins are super fine. The energy here is astonishing, as is the concentration. Drink or hold.
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Aromas of violets, cassis and blueberries sit fresh on the nose of this striking pinot noir. This has a very rich, attractively complex style with so much to offer in every regard. The palate has multiple phases of fresh, red and blue-fruit flavors with fine, layered tannins. The supple, long finish holds very focused, in alluringly spicy mode.
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The highest vines in Gualtallary (at an impressive 1,500 meters above sea level) have produced an impressive 2018 Le Paradis Pinot Noir, which is nuanced, insinuating and detailed with some stony austerity and a sense of inner strength and energy that is gobsmacking. It comes from 1.1 hectares planted in 2011 with Dijon's clone 667 that was micro-vinified in 12 separate fermentations in stainless steel and rolling barrels. The wine matured in French barriques for 18 months. It has pungent and deep flavors and great precision. 2,340 bottles were filled in December 2019.
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Le Paradis is a stunning Pinot Noir that ranks among the best examples of the variety in
South America. Sourced from a 1.1-hectare block at 1,500 metres, it’s a chalky, intense,
lightly wooded delight, with pepper spice from 50% whole bunches, pomegranate and
raspberry coulis flavours, understated oak, graceful tannins and a lingering finish.
Le Paradis is a small, 1.1-hectare vineyard planted 1,500 meters above sea level in the highest part of Gualtallary. The vineyard's soils are rich in limestone, although in a compacted form known locally as "Indian cement," a mixture of sand, calcium carbonate, and gravel. This type of soil, plus the mountain climate, make this wine an austere pinot with floral and fruity tones as well as minerals. It was fermented with 50% whole clusters, which helped make the tannins more assertive, more present, and it also seems to provide more fruit, especially on the palate, where that sensation of sour cherries dominates. This is a tense wine with sharp acidity and delicate density, but with incisive tannins. A pinot close to a barolo.
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Le Paradis is a small 1.1-hectare vineyard planted 1,500 meters above sea level in the highest part of Gualtallary. The soils of that vineyard are rich in limestone, but it's compacted in what is locally known as "Indian cement," a mixture of sand, calcium carbonate and gravel that gives the wines a sort of monolithic structure that's tense, with a texture similar to what chalk would have on the tongue. You feel that here, but it also has aromas and flavors of flowers and herbs in what is perhaps the longest and deepest of the house's wines. It was aged for 12 months in barrels (it once reached 18 months, but winemaker Roy Urvieta has progressively reduced the time in oak to retain more fruit) and 20% of them were made of new oak, which provides very light touches of toasted oak and spices. The fruit, however, is what rules in this exceptional pinot.
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The Le Paradis Vineyard belongs to Laura Catena and her sister Adrianna Catena, and it feels like paradise, according to Laura. The 12 hectare site is lined by trees and fruit orchards, with majestic views of the Andes sitting at an impressive 1525 metres in the Gualtallary Alto, Tupungato, Uco Valley. The soil is deeper, with calcium carbonate texture and boulders below the loam. This wine has a wealth of minerality that leads with intense red berry aromatics, herbaceous notes, and some reduction on first pouring. The oak is beautifully managed, and the textures are silky smooth thanks to the rolling fermentors and concrete eggs in use. Paradis is the most flavourful in red cherries of the group, and the label with the most style. Rare high altitude pinot noir that is worth a look.
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The nose of the 2017 Le Paradis Pinot Noir has a flinty/reductive personality, and it took some time to open up. There were many changes implemented between 2016 (the first vintage) and this 2017, one of them was the picking date, which, in the warmer year like 2017, was crucial. The palate reveals great minerality, a chalky texture and a long finish. This is more about the soil and the place than the grape. This comes from 1.1 hectares in the highest plot they have in Gualtallary, in a place that is very cold.
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A new frontier for Pinot Noirs in Argentina. Grown in Gualtallary at 1,500 meters above sea level and micro-produced in 12 lots, 50% roll-fermented by oenologist Roy Urvieta, the result is a fascinatingly profound array of subtle flavors. A fairly pale red in the glass, Le Paradís delivers a nose of damp earth and mint, fragrant notes of leather and rose, and touches of licorice and orange petit-four, each stage bigger than the last. In the mouth, the flavors are intense, with a delicate, smooth texture, hints of chalk and well-integrated acidity clad in a silk glove.
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