Bodega Catena Zapata

The winery was founded in 1902 by Nicola Catena, an Italian immigrant newly arrived in Mendoza. Three generations later, Nicolás Catena was among the first to see that the future of Malbec lay in the mountains rather than the plain, and in 1994 he became the first Argentine to export a world-class Malbec under his own name.

That bet on altitude ended at the Adrianna vineyard, in Gualtallary, in the Tupungato area, at almost fifteen hundred metres. The logic is climatic: the higher you go, the lower the average temperature and the wider the day-to-night swing, which preserves acidity while the mountain sunlight works on the grape skins.

The name of our wine is not a metaphor. White Bones comes from specific rows in Block 1 of Adrianna whose soil is full of calcareous deposits, limestone and fossilised animal bones: the remains of a river that once ran through there.

The estate's research —plant selection, soil and climate analysis, sustainable practices— is led by Laura Catena, Nicolás's daughter.