Moving beyond Malbec
The view from Bodega Catena Zapata’s Adrianna Vineyard, almost 1,520m high in the Uco Valley south of Mendoza, is nothing short of magnificent.
The snow-frosted Andes command the western sky, looming above the vineyard like a prone Gulliver clad in white before a valley of Lilliputians. A current of wind flows ceaselessly off the mountains, rustling the leaves of the grapevines like a gurgling river.
With difficulty, I turned my gaze down into a calicata, a test pit dug into the earth between rows of Chardonnay vines. It revealed layers of pale beige limestone soil interspersed with large, smooth white rocks. Nearby was another pit, but the soil in it was completely different: chalky limestone infused with nothing larger than pebbles. Across the row was yet another pit, with no limestone, just loamy loess.
Wines produced from each of these soils are just as different. Catena’s 2012 White Bones Chardonnay, from the chalky soil, is dry and citrusy, with aromas and flavours of minerals and herbs. A 2012 White Stones Chardonnay, from the rockier soil, is higher toned and more herbal, with tangy, succulent flavours and more intense minerality. And the grapes from the loamier soils go into Catena Alta Chardonnay, which has fine acidity but is fruitier and less mineral.
Among wine drinkers, Argentina is known above all for Malbec. This friendly red, most often in a rich style dominated by flavours of jammy fruit and oak, has become almost a generic brand, the red wine equivalent of Pinot Grigio. In bars and restaurants all over the United States, consumers seeking an anonymous red wine ask for a glass of Malbec.
But a significant segment of t he wine-drinking population has no use for Malbec and, by extension, for Argentina.
These are consumers on the leading edge, who have prompted new interest in wines of finesse and harmony. They have spearheaded re-examinations of grapes once considered too obscure and regions that had been roundly dismissed. They prize wines that express terroir. For them, Argentine Malbec may just as well be Australian Shiraz.
Yet just as Australia has been stereotyped, perhaps unfairly, as a source of only heavy, fruity wines, so has Argentina been typed by the popular style of Malbec. Though most of the wine from the Mendoza region, the centre of Argentine Malbec production, continues to be made in this fruity style, a growing number of producers are trying to move beyond the jam to make wines that explore the nuances of Mendoza terroir.
Some are looking to make better, finer Malbec. Others are looking to different grapes like Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Some producers, like Catena Zapata, are doing both.
And so all over Mendoza, as I discovered on a trip here in December, vineyards are dotted with these calicatas, soil pits dug partly to educate visitors, perhaps, but also to educate the winemakers themselves, who for so long cared more about ease of farming and quantity of production than the quality of the wines or the particularity of terroirs. It’s easy to imagine Cistercian monks doing something similar as they catalogued the terroirs of Burgundy 500 years ago.
The process has been a challenge because the soils of Mendoza are incredibly complicated. In the Adrianna Vineyard, and in many other places, the soils change radically from one row of vines to the next, sometimes over a matter of meters.
The geology of Mendoza was shaped eons ago, when an ancient ocean covered the territory from Patagonia to Peru, leaving behind rich deposits of limestone. Over countless millenniums, rivers from the Andes deposited rocks and silt, leaving deep clay soils, stones and gravel in many varying combinations.
“You still have pure limestone in the Andes, and slender veins extend into Mendoza,” said Pedro Parra, a geologist from Chile who specialises in terroir and is a partner in Altos Las Hormigas, a Mendoza producer intent on making terroir-expressive wines. “You can have pure limestone in one spot, but a few meters to the left, none.”
For Parra and his colleagues, limestone is the holy grail, the fount from which the prize quality of minerality flows. He has relentlessly sought it out in Mendoza, digging pits, analysing soil samples, correlating his discoveries with what he tastes in the wines. The differences can be astonishing. Pulenta Estate, an excellent producer in Luján de Cuyo, the region just outside the city of Mendoza where a good many wineries are, has a vineyard primarily of sand, gravel and clay. It also has a vineyard in the Uco Valley to the south with rocky limestone deposits.
The Malbec from the vineyard in Luján de Cuyo is pleasantly fruity and velvety soft. The Malbec from the Uco Valley is structured and tannic, with fruit threaded through with aromas and flavours of graphite. Pulenta blends the two to make its estate Malbec, but I prefer the Uco Valley solo.
Indeed, the Malbecs I tasted from Mendoza from clay soils, especially if the clay was highly irrigated and fertilised, were dark, sweet, fruity and high in alcohol. They were sadly familiar. Those from rockier soils, often with some limestone, tended to be more structured, precise and nuanced. Parra takes a Manichaean view of terroir. “It’s a fight between rocks and clay,” he said, standing in a soil pit in an Uco Valley vineyard between the towns of La Consulta and Eugenio Bustos. “Clay equals monster wines. Rocks equal vertical, structured wines. You either like clay-style wines or limestone-style wines.”
For Catena Zapata, it’s never been that simple. Nicolás Catena, who took over the family winery in the 1960s, pioneered the movement toward higher-altitude vineyards in the 1980s and 1990s after he became convinced that his wines could achieve grace and finesse only if made in cooler climates than the family’s warmer lower-elevation vineyards nearer to the city of Mendoza.
Only after planting the Adrianna Vineyard, the highest of Catena Zapata’s vineyards in the Uco Valley, did the winery begin to analyse the complexity of its soils. In 1995, Catena’s daughter Laura Catena created the Catena Institute, a research and development arm, which pays special attention to Adrianna.
Laura Catena, who is now the general director of Catena Zapata, believes that the soils are only part of the formula for making graceful, nuanced wine, along with the cool, dry, fresh climate at high altitude and the quality of the light.
“We need both elements to make wines such as those from Adrianna: cool climate and special soils,” she said.
Driving through the vineyard area, Parra, the geologist, pointed out that the flat areas in the wine lands, mostly clay and alluvial soils, were well planted with vines, but that the steep slopes, made up of rocky, sandy limestone, were bare.
“The tradition is planting on the flats, but the grand cru is on these gorgeous slopes, which are completely unplanted,” he lamented.
“Maybe that will be the future, Argentina 2020.”
A significant segment of the winedrinking population has no use for Malbec