Bonjour à tous. Hello, all, and welcome back to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog. Today, I am highlighting Clos La Coutale, a producer of Malbec from the Cahors area in southwest France. It is a wine we have enjoyed a few times over the past several months, including at our recent cassoulet dinner (see our previous post about the event). I first tried it when my brother, Phil, brought it to a family gathering, then I acquired a few bottles to try with various foods.
Malbec is enjoying huge popularity as the signature grape of Argentina, especially the Mendoza region. The wines are big, splashy, fleshy, fruity, can be a bit jammy, and often high in alcohol. They work well as leisure wines, or what I sometimes call conversational or patio wines, wines you drink while relaxing with family or friends, not necessarily as an accompaniment with food. The ripe, plush, high alcohol style is popular among many modern wine drinkers, especially in the U.S., and among influential wine writers. To be sure, this style isn’t true of all Mendoza Malbec. Even the modern international wine style can pair well and bring pleasure when paired with foods such as grilled meats, which is also characteristic of Argentina.
Although the Malbec grape was exported to other places in the world, its genetic origins are thought to be in Cahors. Here are two maps to help you understand the location. The first is a zoomed out version to give you the perspective of Western Europe. The second is zoomed in to southwest France.
You can see the town of Cahors and the region is midway between the Atlantic on the west and the Mediterranean on the east. The River Lot snakes through the region, twisting and turning. The town of Cahors is on a peninsula formed by the river.
Malbec from Cahors produces a wine that is nearly black and inky in color intensity. The grape has thick skins and produces a wine with prominent tannins, which enables long aging. Appellation rules allow up to 30% Merlot to be added to the wine to soften it, add to the perfume, and enhance its approachability while young. The aroma and flavor profile are much like the color, dark fruit, earth, licorice, sometimes tar. Because of the climate of Cahors, the same latitude as Portland, Oregon, the grapes retain their freshness and balance. As a result, they ripen at lower sugars than the Argentine Malbec and so produce balanced wines with lower alcohol. Cahors is robust, hearty, fruity, but still has complexity and at least a degree of elegance. It pairs well with classic foods of the region, like the cassoulet, but is not expensive and would work well with a variety of everyday red meat dishes. You could enjoy it with pizza, nachos, meat loaf, burgers, veal, pot roast, and hearty poultry dinners.
You can enjoy a fantastic video about Cahors at GrapeRadio. Visit http://www.graperadio.com/ and scroll to the program called The Scent of Black. It is about 12 minutes in length and well worth viewing.
Clos La Coutale is the Cahors producer that we can obtain here in Jackson. It is apparently widely available since my brother also found it in Chattanooga. I saw several listings for it at the WineBid wine auction site. Here are my notes on the bottle we opened recently at the cassoulet dinner.
Clos La Coutale Cahors 2008. This is an example of what is old is new again. Cahors is the ancient home of the Malbec grape. Now, it is better known as the signature grape of Argentina, but it is thought to have originated in the Cahors region of southwest France. It is making a comeback there and the region's wines are beginning to appear more often on the shelves of American wine merchants. The color is very dark, almost inky, with mineral aromas and dark fruit. This example from Clos la Coutale has a small amount of Merlot to add fleshiness and complexity. Nonetheless, it is powerful, especially in its youth. The palate is not rough, but not yet completely smooth. The acidity was medium with medium body, almost full-bodied. Dark cherry, berry, and exotic minerality is appreciated. Nicely balanced, moderately complex, medium to long finish, it is a very versatile wine, enjoyable with many different hearty foods. It can be consumed on its own, but pairs well with food. It is more elegant and finessed than many Mendoza expressions of Malbec, but this is a matter of preference. 80% Malbec, 20% Merlot, 13.0% alcohol. We paid $18 for this wine at Briarwood Wines in Jackson.
That’s our post for today. Thanks for reading us. Keep coming back for more wine and food adventures at Cépage et Cuisine. Pass along the web address to others you think might be interested. We’d like to increase interest in the blog. Feel free to comment, offer suggestions, and share your own experiences. In the meantime,
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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