Laura Catena is an Argentine national and Nicolás Catena’s daughter. She graduated magnum cum laude from Harvard in Biology and attended medical school at Stanford University. She completed her medical residency at the Harbour-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California.
In 1998 Laura joined the family wine business as head of exports. She now practices as an emercency medical physician at the UC San Francisco Mount Zion Medical Center in San Francisco. She lives with her husband Dr Daniel McDermott and son Luca in San Francisco. She has taken winemaking and viticulture classes at UC Berkeley and Santa Rosa Junior College. Her own Argentinian vineyard project is called Tikal.