Nicasia Malbec

Bodega Catena Zapata was founded in 1902 in Mendoza, Argentina, and describes itself as the oldest Argentine family winery still in family hands; the winery dates its association with high-altitude vineyards to that same year. Its modern reputation rests on

Nicolas Catena Zapata, a widely travelled academic economist who, after exposure in the 1970s to the wines of Bordeaux and Napa, concluded in the early 1980s that the key to quality lay in planting the right varieties in the right place, specifically in cooler, higher sites in the Andean foothills.

That conviction produced the estate's high-altitude plantings: the Adrianna vineyard in Gualtallary, 12 hectares planted in 1992 at 1,450 metres, and the Nicasia vineyard in Paraje Altamira, nine hectares planted in 1996 at 1,095 metres, both to ungrafted pre-phylloxera material.

Jancis Robinson credits him with putting Argentine wine on the world map. The winery is known for its role in reviving Malbec, and its Adrianna vineyard has been described as the Grand Cru of South America. Laura Catena is managing director and the founder of the Catena Institute of Wine.