In the mid-2000s, malbec began an export and sales boom that brought him to the top of all the specialized media. And along with that diffusion, the inevitable term “fashion” was associated with it. “It was horrible, because talking about a fashion is talking about something that will inevitably happen. It scandalized me to think that the vine that my great-grandfather planted in 1902 and that made the country known was taken as something fleeting, “he says. Laura Catena, great-granddaughter of Nicola Catena, founder of the homonymous winery and also recent co-author, together with the winemaker Alejandro Vigil, from “Malbec mon amour” (Catapult), a book that accurately and comprehensively covers the history, geology, future and challenges of this iconic strain.
Fight heresy
Two decades after that initial export and sales boom, this variety continues to be talked about and is more relevant than ever. According to Catena, it is already one of the 10 great strains of the world, something that did not happen 10 years ago. “In my opinion it is because it is simply very rich, it is like including a chocolate dessert on the menu, it does not fail,” he describes. Fruity but diverse in character depending on the harvest area, it always has a lot of aroma, great texture and delicacy in tannins. “It is very unique, it has power and smoothness at the same time”, points out the specialist, whose love for Malbec was “in crescendo” along with her books, since “Argentine Wine”, a guide published in the United States and with worldwide success, to “Gold in the vineyards”, on the most iconic wineries.
Proof of this growing love was also the realization of the label of Catena Zapata Malbec Argentino, which pays tribute with its illustration to the history of the variety in France and its subsequent rise in the country, with four female figures representing the different landmarks. “This model has broken the scheme of a classic wine label,” he is proud.
From all these factors, then, as well as the joint work with Alejandro Vigil in the winery, this book was born, which for both authors is no longer so much a market need as an emergency. “That Malbec is a fad is heresy,” they argue. And since the best way to break prejudices is to be disruptive, their mode was a kind of illustrated manifesto with a lot of humor and freshness, in which they even played with two different illustrators to represent each one. In fact, the cover, with Laura and Alejandro in a car, reflects their way of creating the text, always hyperactive and generating ideas in motion. And the interior also has its back and forth: while the first part is easy and fluid to read, the second becomes a little more technical and specific. “We want you to be able to read it from an expert to a common consumer,” they detail.
True origin
For now, it is difficult to speak of Malbec as fashion when it comes to a strain with more than 2000 years of history. Because although the Argentine popular imagination places it as a Creole invention, the truth is that this variety is extensively documented in the winemaking history of France. According to DNA studies carried out in 2009 in that country, the crossing of strains that gave rise to Malbec probably occurred on the banks of the River Lot, in the Cahors region, perhaps before the conquest by the Roman legions or during the Middle Ages. The book tells that it was thanks to Queen Eleonora of Aquitaine (1122-1204, the only woman to become Queen of France and England) that Malbec plantations spread from Cahors to the Pyrenees and from Saint-Émilion to Côtes de Bourg. Married at the age of 15 to what would become Louis VII of France, “black wine”, as this strain was called, flowed through her cuts and became the drink of royalty. And when years later she divorced and renounced the crown to marry Henry II of England, the influence continued through Saxon lands.
The history that follows is long, and includes the planting of Malbec around palaces, the establishment as wine of the church by John XXIII and the arrival in Russia to heal the ulcers of a tsar, among other milestones. The corollary, however, is a firm footing in the world viticulture landscape long before it arrived in Argentina.
This only happened in the mid-nineteenth century and thanks to the great Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. An admirer of the culture of France and England, in 1853 the hero hired the French agronomist Michel Aimé Pouget to create a vineyard in Mendoza, which was called Quinta Agronómica. “Pouget brought with him a significant load of plants and seeds of French origin, such as cabernet, semillon, chardonnay, riesling and the first strains of the Malbec variety,” the book details. The seed was literally planted.
Challenges
And what is Malbec facing today? The next prejudice to break is the one that maintains that it is a variety that does not age as well as, for example, Cabernet Sauvignon. Because according to recent studies, it does so with impeccable performance. “I recently went to a conference in Texas, the most important of sommeliers in the United States, where in a tasting it was decided that Malbec aged better than Cabernet. And this was because they drank Malbec from the cold zone of the Uco Valley, with more tannins in the skins due to the solar intensity, more acidity, more polyphenols ”, explains Catena. Thus, the Malbec from Valle de Uco could be a wine to be aged, just like the old versions from France. That is the next place to conquer, as well as convince of its collectability. “They ask me a lot what wine you can buy when a child is born, then open at 18 or when you get married. Today I can say that a pure Malbec from the Uco Valley ”, Laura is proud.
Finally, this is an industry that is also very sensitive to climate change. In a strain that absorbs and reflects the terroir in an extremely faithful way, radically changing with just a few kilometers apart, the transformations in the land and its conditions are not minor. For this reason, since 2005, in Catena Zapata they have begun to explore other regions such as La Rioja, Salta, San Juan or Patagonia, in search of starting to prepare for the lack of water that Mendoza is known to experience in a not so short term. . “Malbecs from other areas have a very different and interesting flavor. Although they are not of the same level as the Mendoza of the Uco Valley, they have a lot of future to discover and great potential ”, points out the author.
Although if asked about his preferred terroir and the one that he most enjoyed knowing in depth while making the book, he points without hesitation to Gualtallary. “There were no vineyards in the Monastery area. When my father planted they told him that the grapes were not going to ripen and they were not going to serve the wines, but the most awarded that we have today come from there. So yes, it is my favorite. What was almost impossible is always close by ”.
Image gallery
