By Laura Catena for The Huffington Post. Laura is the Managing Director of Alamos Wines and author of Vino Argentino: An Insider's Guide to the Wines and Wine Country of ArgentinaThe title of this post is a question I asked myself twenty years ago when I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biology and headed back to Mendoza to see what my father had conjured up in my absence. He was a third generation winemaker with a mission to make wine from Argentina that would stand among the best in the world. His canvas was the Andes Mountains, his color the dark purple Malbec. Nicolas Catena -- mi papa -- set out to change a 400-year-old industry in the fifth largest wine-producing country in the world: Argentina.
Science told him that he should seek cooler climates toward the Andes Mountains if he was to make richer wines with vibrant aromas and dense, age-worthy tannins. I spent those early years as research director, studying the soils, the climate and plant selections called "clones." The wines we made from these remote, high-altitude vineyards were indeed vibrant, and -- like works of art -- when the critics reviewed them favorably, they sold.
One day, I found myself tasting one of our wines -- the Catena Zapata Malbec Argentino -- at the family winery with a group of friends. I told them the story of my grandfather, Nicola Catena, who sailed to Argentina from Italy at the young age of 18 in 1898. As I pictured him sitting alone in the transatlantic ship, I tasted the salt of his nostalgia and the deep, velvety Malbec tannins.
I understood why wine is different from any other beverage, and why winemaking is more an art than a science. From the winery owner's imprint on the label to the reality that every vineyard row in the world produces grapes with a different aroma and flavor, how could a scientist reign in such rebellious acts of nature?
It gave me great relief to come to this realization. Studies have shown that, when blinded, even the most experienced wine tasters give..Read full article
