Meet the Winemakers Reviving Malbec—in France
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While Malbec is the grape that put Argentine wine on the world map, many wine lovers have forgotten that this bold variety is a French immigrant. Frenchman Michel Pouget brought the grape to Argentina in 1853 at the bequest of the country’s president, and the variety has made a new home for itself throughout the country and especially in Mendoza’s dry, high-altitude vineyards. Although it is often overshadowed back home by the red wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux (where frost killed off most of the Malbec planted there in 1956), the winemakers of Cahors in the country’s southwest have continued to make excellent but often overlooked versions to this day.
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Few experts have experience in both countries, but there are two well-known enologists who have their feet firmly planted in both Mendoza and Cahors. In addition to his highly regarded Cobos Malbec from Mendoza, Paul Hobbs also vinifies exemplary French Malbec under his Crocus label, a joint project with French vintner Bertrand Gabriel Vigouroux. Meanwhile, world-renowned winemaking consultant Michel Rolland has been working with Malbec in both countries for more than three decades, at Chateau Lagrézette in Cahors and currently at eight wineries in Argentina—including Bodega Monteviejo, Cuvelier Los Andes, and Mariflor—all of which provide base wines for his personal project Clos de Los Siete.
Hobbs and Rolland agree that while both regions offer a continental climate, meaning they are not close to a major body of water and have cold winters and hot summers, Mendoza and Cahors have little in common besides Malbec. After the Second World War and until quite recently Cahors was known for rustic, tannic wines that Hobbs refers to as “aggressive in the mouth.” While Rolland chalks the stylistic differences up to the quantity over quality situation that has plagued many wine regions during transitional periods in their evolution, Hobbs pulls no punches when he explains the reasons for Cahors Malbec’s poor reputation in the past, noting a lot of problems in the region as recently as 2009, when he made his fist visit there. “I found all the wines at that time to be having issues with sanitation,” he says. “They were all infected with some microbial issue, everything I tasted. More than just Brett [Brettanomyces], it was bacterial as well as yeast spoilage, and then there were oxidation issues as well.”
Also known as Cot or Auxerrois back home in France, Malbec from there is now often described as being more elegant—what some would call an old-world style—than the powerhouse Malbec from Argentina that first became popular in the United States in the late 1990s and continued as a steakhouse staple well into the first decade of this century. Rolland says the differences in flavor and style are due to ripeness of the grapes at harvest. Mendoza’s hot, dry climate can produce grapes with sugar levels as high as 235 grams per liter, while in a rainy year in Cahors the berries can struggle to reach levels of 170 grams. Once grapes are harvested, it is the winemaker’s role to coax the best out of them in pursuit of the perfect wine, which is Rolland’s specialty in every region in which he works.
Although Hobbs was not wowed with the wines he tasted on his first visit to Cahors, he recognized its potential immediately. “One thing I was very impressed with was the quality of the soils in the region, they reminded me a lot of Burgundy,” he says. “And then also the topography, given that they had plateau regions as well as terraced regions, and the way that the Lot River snakes as it winds its way out toward the Atlantic also gives you all kinds of different exposures.” Argentine wine began to enter the global market in the 1990s, while the tango and Argentine culture were achieving a growing global fan base. Back then the country had no reputation at all for its wine, and thus Hobbs says it wasn’t weighed down negative baggage. Whereas Cahors’s prominence (or lack thereof) had been tied for centuries to Bordeaux’s favored trading status with England and control of seabound trade routes. He believes that the region was caught in a “spinning nosedive” that began to reverse around the time he landed there, when other major players such as Alain Dominique Perrin, owner of Chateau Lagrézette, invested in Cahors.
Describing Argentine Malbec as “plush” and “generous,” Hobbs says versions from Cahors are “more restrained—more what people would think of European style in the sense that there’s tremendous precision to the fruit,” he says. “The way the fruit shows up and the textures in the mouth, the tension, structural qualities, the whole way it plays is a very different creature. And I think that’s one of the beauties.” And while Malbec from Argentina may be ready to drink the moment it is released to market, he advises patience with bottles from Cahors. “They generally take a little longer—maybe a good year or two longer in the bottle,” he says.
Hobbs was originally drawn to Cahors because it is known as “the birthplace of Malbec,” a concept that is not lost on the UIVC, Interprofessional Wine Union of Cahors, which began promoting the region using that exact language around 15 years ago. Having seen the stir that Malbec from Argentina was making around the world, Cahors’s regional wine authority has made a strong point of reminding wine lovers that without the original vines brought there in 1853, there would likely be no Argentine Malbec. We have certainly seen more and more of it popping up on wine lists, and it’s no small thanks to the attention paid to notable winemakers like Rolland and Hobbs as well as the strong work of wineries in the region including Chateau de Mercuès, Domaine Cosse Maisonneuve, Chateau de Cèdre, and Chateau de Cayx, which is owned by Denmark’s royal family. If you are already a fan of Malbec from Argentina—or any full-bodied red wine, for that matter—Malbec from Cahors is worth seeking out. It’s not an either/or proposition; as Rolland points out, “Today with, the right viticulture and good climate conditions we can make beautiful Malbec in Cahors and in Argentina.”
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