Appellation Cahors AOC

Today's Cahors from the new young generation of winemakers are quality focused, concentrated, fruity, tremendous food matching wines and ready to reclaim their legacy from the recent masters of malbec, the Argentinians. The Argentinians have been over-extracted, oak loving and rustic. But modern Cahors is on a different path and the experience is well worth it.
In the 14th century the melbec "black wines" of Cahors ran in rivers through the English courts, such was the demand. Then the Hundred Years War between France and England, phylloxera and a devestating frost in 1956 all but destroyed the vines of Cahors. Today, from the ashes of the once dominant appellation, the wines of Cahors are making an impressive come-back.

Cahors is the ancestral home of the Malbec grape and today offers outstanding big, rich wines.
Cahors in the Lot is one of France’s most beautiful regions, a top food destination, and a favourite second home to several French presidents. It is also one of France’s most ancient wine growing regions and the home of the Malbec grape. Its wines were heralded for their quality by popes, czars and royalty throughout Europe in the Middle Ages but only received AOC recognition in 1971. Cahors wines were traditionally reserved for military officers while the troops were relegated to drinking Bordeaux wines. Cahors languished in obscurity for most of the twentieth century because of several earlier events.

• In the late 1800’s, phylloxera wiped out a large portion of the regions vines
• The Bordeaux wine trade historically controlled the distribution and they taxed and boycotted Cahors’ wines in order to give advantage to their own
• In 1956, a severe freeze destroyed most of the vines, reducing the region’s annual crop by 90%.

However, in the last twenty years, investment in Cahors vineyards has been rivaled only by that in the Languedoc. New producers and a new generation of winemakers are recapturing the quality reputation of the past.

The Lot, south of the more crowded Dordogne is dramatic and scenic. Vines for Cahors may be planted either on the notably thin topsoil of the arid, limestone plateau, the causses, or on the sand and gravel terraces between the plateau and the river, the coteaux. The suitability of each is much debated by the winemakers although most agree that the causses tend to produce wine for long ageing, a more traditional style of Cahors. The wine made on the coteaux can be drunk much younger.

Cahors wines are very distinctive and quite different from Bordeaux and the Languedoc. What distinguishes them from other great wines of the southwest, and from Argentinean Malbecs, is their freshness and vivacity. The wines are a dark, dense, sometimes even a black colour in their youth. Their rich and complex aromas surprisingly develop over time: violet, black currant, cherry, liquorice, vanilla, menthol and truffle.

In Cahors they produce only Malbec red wine. It is permitted to be blended with up to 30% Merlot which softens the Malbec. Like much of the southwest they are exceptional food wines rather than wines to be drunk by itself. While good, light, easy-drinking Cahors are made, the best producers favour concentrated powerful wines requiring time in oak and the bottle. The modern trend is to make wines with as few other grape varieties as possible, to retain the true characteristics of the Malbec. Some say that Malbec combines the best qualities of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot in a single grape.

The increasing care and skills of the new generation of winemakers is succeeding in retaining depth of flavour with some wonderfully smooth attractive tannins resulting in exceptional smooth, sophisticated, elegant, big mouth-filling wines, enjoyable young but with good ageing potential.
 
Without doubt Argentina has developed a huge reputation for Malbec, which was taken there to Mendoza by French agronomist Miguel Pouget in the 19th century. While there are many great Argentinean Malbecs, there is also an opinion they are often too powerful, over-technical and over-oaked. Having also drawn from Argentinean experience, today’s modern Cahors winemakers believe their wines are more drinkable.

Watch this video for a Malbec wine AOC Cahors tasting. Enjoy!