An Italian immigrant, a Malbec vineyard and four generations.

Bodega Catena Zapata is a family-owned winery in Agrelo, in the Luján de Cuyo department of Mendoza, Argentina. English Wikipedia traces it to Nicola Catena, an Italian immigrant whose family made wine in Belforte del Chienti, in the Marche region; he arrived in Argentina in 1898 and in 1902 planted his first vineyard of Malbec in Mendoza, a grape then known in Bordeaux mainly as a blending variety. The first winery stood in La Libertad, in the Rivadavia department of Mendoza. The company describes the business as a family winery passed down through four generations.

The winery went next to Nicola’s son, Domingo Catena. His wife was Angélica Zapata, and the family name the winery carries joins the two surnames. The Drinks Business reported in December 2021 that Domingo bought an old Malbec vineyard and named it after her; the Angélica vineyard in Lunlunta, Maipú, holds some of the winery’s oldest vines, English Wikipedia says, dating them to 1922–1924.

The third generation changed the business most. Nicolás Catena Zapata, Domingo and Angélica’s son, took charge of the family business in 1963, English Wikipedia says, citing Monte Cristo magazine. He held a doctorate in economics from the National University of Cuyo and a master’s degree from Columbia University, and in his early years he extended the business into bottling. As a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1980s, he visited the wineries of the Napa Valley, and he returned to Mendoza aiming to make wines that could stand beside the best in the world. Decanter named him its Man of the Year for 2009.

High vineyards, a research institute and a pyramid.

Catena Zapata’s reputation rests on altitude. In the early 1990s Nicolás Catena began planting vineyards in Gualtallary, in the Uco Valley, close to 1,500 metres above sea level. In 1992 he planted the Adrianna vineyard there, named after his youngest daughter; English Wikipedia gives its height as about 1,450 metres and notes that the site was seen as experimental, because the district’s harsh climate had not supported vines before. The same year the Domingo vineyard was planted in the Uco Valley at about 1,120 metres. Other estate vineyards include La Pirámide in Agrelo, planted in 1983 at about 950 metres, Nicasia, and Angélica Sur in San Carlos, established in 2005. All of them are in Mendoza, where the wine is made.

The fourth generation brought science into the story. Laura Catena, Nicolás’s daughter, studied biology at Harvard and medicine at Stanford and worked as an emergency physician before joining the family winery in 1995. That year she founded the Catena Institute of Wine, which studies high-altitude terroir, the flavour and genetic diversity of Malbec, and sustainable viticulture. English Wikipedia says she was appointed managing director of Bodega Catena Zapata in 2012, and that she has served as honorary president of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust since 2023. She is also the author of Vino Argentino, a guide to Argentine wine published by Chronicle Books in 2010.

The most recognisable image of the brand is a building. The winery in Agrelo is shaped as a pyramid modelled on Maya architecture, designed by the Argentine architect Pablo Sánchez Elía; English Wikipedia dates its construction to the late 1990s, and La Nación published Nicolás Catena Zapata’s tribute to the architect in December 2025.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Argentine and Chilean wine names: Catena Zapata, Trapiche, Norton, Santa Rita, Montes, Errázuriz and Cono Sur. Wine brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A wine brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Partners, protégés and a vineyard ranked first in the world.

The family has worked with other houses. In 1999 Catena Zapata joined Baron Éric de Rothschild, owner of Château Lafite Rothschild, to create Bodegas Caro in Mendoza, English Wikipedia says; Decanter later interviewed Saskia de Rothschild and Laura Catena about the partnership.

The winemaking team has its own following. Alejandro Vigil has been Catena Zapata’s director of winemaking since 2007, English Wikipedia says. In 2008 he and Adrianna Catena, Nicolás’s youngest daughter, founded El Enemigo, their own wine project focused on Cabernet Franc and Mendoza terroirs.

Recognition has followed the vineyards. In July 2023, at a ceremony in Rioja, Spain, World’s Best Vineyards named Catena Zapata the number one vineyard in the world for that year, ahead of Marqués de Riscal in second place, according to the organisation’s own press release; the same list placed El Enemigo tenth. Laura Catena also received the first Old Vine Hero award in 2023, English Wikipedia says.

The research work continues to be published. English Wikipedia lists papers in which the Catena Institute of Wine and Argentine scientists studied how altitude and heat affect the chemistry of Malbec, including a study in Scientific Reports of 201 Malbec wines from 23 parcels across 12 geographical indications in Mendoza, over the 2016 to 2018 vintages. The winery also keeps old-vine plant material in a dedicated vineyard, the Viejito de Rivadavia, close to where the family began.

The name needs a little care online. “Catena” is the Italian word for a chain and a common Italian surname, and several Catena family members run separate wine projects; the winery’s own site is catenawines.com.

For a design guide, Catena Zapata shows how a family surname, a single grape and a building shaped like a pyramid can carry a Mendoza winery from a 1902 Malbec vineyard to a place on the world stage. Compare Concha y Toro, the Chilean wine house across the Andes, and Château Lafite Rothschild, the Bordeaux partner in Bodegas Caro. For this guide we use Malbec purple, Andean stone and adobe cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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