Nicolás Catena's Favorite Wine Ever: Châteaux Lafite 1990

In another excerpt in his interview with a costa rican newspaper, Nicolás Catena mentions his most memorable wine: (drums!! please...):

-Which is the wine that you remember the most?
-I remember a 1990 Châteaux Lafite. I drank it in Paris with my wife Elena, and for some reason we both still remember everything about that wine.

-Your favorite wine?

-Red wines I prefer malbecs because I like concentrated, dense wines. Regarding whites I prefer chardonnays, because of its complexity when young and also when they have four to five years in the bottle.

Nicolás Catena: "Our Argentine Malbec Has No Comparison"

In an exclusive interview to a costa rican newspaper, Nicolás Catena, the man who single-handedly change the argentinian wine industry for the better, makes a couple of striking comments about argentine malbec and california wines. It is well worth reading.

"Our Argentine malbec has no comparison, it has red fruit characteristics and concentration unthinkable in a European wine. And consumers are choosing each day a greater proportion of these New World wines."

About the influence that California wines had on his approach to winemaking:

"In the late eighties we started making wine by abandoning the traditional and old Italian or Spanish styles and started using what I call the California version of the French style of Bordeaux and Burgundy. We changed the time of harvesting, extraction method, we starting fermenting in stainless steel tanks and using small new French oak barrels. For the first time an argentinian winery stopped producing wines with excessive oxidation to make wines that tasted what the international markets were demanding".

This father of the modern argentinean malbec is a very proud man:

"Most of the international critics think that Argentine Malbec is unique in the world of red wines and each day increases the demand for it. It is not comparable to anything else because of the greater concentration, exaggerated smoothness and uniqueness of its fruit."

Thanks to his vision, there is a before and after for the mighty Argentinian Malbec.