A pair of world-renowned winemakers are crafting Malbec in both Argentina and France, and they explain to us how the French version stands up.
Francis Ford Coppola’s New Wine Cave Has Already Produced Some Blockbuster Bottlesis 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 toin 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.
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.
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,” 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.
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.
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.
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