Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Laura Catena's flagship is the 2006 Nico by Luca. It was sourced from Malbec vines averaging 49 years of age in Altamira and La Consulta and aged for 18 months in new French barriques. Saturated purple/black in color, it exhibits a superb nose of toasty oak, Asian spices, incense, lavender, black cherry, and blackberry. Full-bodied, dense, and powerful, it managed to remain light on its feet. Smooth textured, succulent, and long, this is a pleasure-bent effort that will satisfy hedonists from 2013 to 2026.
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Wine Spectator
Very ripe, with broad, fleshy layers of boysenberry and blackberry fruit, fig sauce, Turkish coffee and melted licorice. There's lots of spice and fruitcake notes on the rich finish, which sails on gracefully despite its weight. This has a gorgeous mouthfeel for such a dense wine. Drink now through 2011. 100 cases made.
Laura Catena is a fourth generation winemaker who grew up in a traditional Argentine-Italian winemaking family in Mendoza. Laura splits her time between Mendoza and San Francisco, California, where she is an emergency physician, university professor and occasional tango dancer. Laura had the vision of creating a new breed of Argentine wines: small quantities, artisan quality, and true to their individual terroirs. A pioneer of small-grower relations in Mendoza, Laura's incredible, limited production wines come from some of Argentina's best fruit from low-yield, high-elevation, family-owned vineyards. The wines are named after her children - Luca, Dante and Nicola - and symbolize her love for her family. The background of the label is the McDermott coat of arms of her American husband, Daniel McDermott.
Most distinguished and celebrated from Argentina’s Mendoza, Malbec has seen runaway success since the early 2000s. Mendoza’s agreeable, continental climate with hot, dry summers and cold snowy winters allows the perfect conditions for growing outstanding Malbec. This grape is easy to like for its lusty, deep flavors and aromas of blackberry, plum, red cherry, autumn spice and tilled earth. It’s easy to find delicious, fruit-driven, affordable everyday examples and in prices beyond, quite exceptional ones with dense, supple textures that make them capable of aging.