December 2007
CATENA
Zapata Malbec Argentino 2004
The single-vineyard 2004 Malbec “Argentino Vineyard” spent 17 months in new French oak. Remarkably fragrant and complex aromatically, it offers up aromas of wood smoke, creosote, pepper, clove, black cherry, and blackberry. Made in a similar, elegant style, it is the most structured of the three single vineyard wines, needing a minimum of a decade of additional cellaring. It should easily prove to be a 25-40 year wine. It is an exceptional achievement in Malbec. When all is said and done, Catena Zapata is the Argentina winery of reference – the standard of excellence for comparing all others. The brilliant, forward-thinking Nicolas Catena remains in charge, with his daughter, Laura, playing an increasingly large role. The Catena Zapata winery is an essential destination for fans of both architecture and wine in Mendoza. It is hard to believe, given the surge in popularity of Malbec in recent years, that Catena Zapata only began exporting Malbec to the United States in 1994.
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The Wine Advocate was a bi-monthly publication and Robert Parker Wine Advocate continues this tradition, although articles and reviews are now published every week. The main goal is to publish regionally focused reports, which mainly offer wine reviews of new wine releases, but they also produce important vintage retrospectives and occasionally single-label verticals and producer profiles. Since 2019, Robert Parker Wine Advocate has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Michelin Group.