Malbec

When I started drinking wine, I had a European sensibility: place names meant more to me than grape varieties. I didn't know which grapes went into Châteauneuf-du-Pape, St-Emilion, or Rioja, but I knew those wines. That was the 1990s and times have changed: now drinkers, including myself, want to know the precise percentage of each grape variety in a blend or buy wines solely on the variety.

Cahors

On a trip through south-west France several years ago, I passed through Cahors. It's a pretty, relaxed town situated next to the Lot river, with one of the most famous bridges in France. The land is rugged and off-beat, south of the Dordogne on the way to nowhere, quietly doing its own thing as much of France does. I was stuck for something to eat and dared to walk into a dingy bar that had a surprisingly good menu advertised outside. Asking to eat, the barman gestured me to the back past some beaded curtains. I warily stepped through them into an large, tastefully decorated restaurant. Satisfied that the meal was going to be as good as advertised outside the bar, I ordered a local wine and fell in love with it, determined always to drink Cahors whenever I found it in the future. The fruits were black, the oak grainy, the supple yet appealingly rustic texture inviting another sip.

I had no idea the wine was from Malbec, a grape I only heard of later in the context of Argentina. The wine spoke of its place - warm, rural, and timeless - not solely of its grape. Yet everyone now knows the name Malbec, and if anyone knows the place Cahors it is because of Malbec - even though in Cahors it's actually called Auxerrois.

Malbec in France

Malbec was little known until its sudden Argentinian emergence because it never succeeded in France outside of Cahors. It is a Bordeaux grape, but conditions in the moderate maritime climate are difficult: it's susceptible to spring frost and it ripens late and not always successfully. In 1956, spring frost killed off the Malbec vines in both Bordeaux and Cahors. Bordeaux growers simply did not bother replanting, Merlot replacing it as the preferred blending grape (and plantings of Malbec had long been in decline anyway). Now only the Côtes de Blaye consistently adds Malbec to blends. Cahors growers, however, decided to stick with Malbec and replanted it, rewarded with appellation status in 1970, still the only AC in France dedicated to the grape.

Malbec is also grown in the Loire Valley, where it's often called Côt. The wines in this cooler climate are much lighter, with more red fruits than black, and not dissimilar to the Gamay also grown in the region.

Malbec in Argentina

In the late 1980s, the Argentinian economy stabilised for the first time since before the Great Crash of 1929. Up to that point, the wine industry had been focused entirely on the cheap domestic market in a country that had record levels of consumption - 100 litres of wine per person a year in the 1970s. Such had been the neglect of quality grapes in Argentina, Malbec had been pulled up throughout the 1980s, reducing plantings from 50,000ha to 10,000ha (it's now back to over 20,000ha). With the recovery of the economy, more ambitious winemakers decided to focus on exports. Malbec, brought into Argentina by French winemakers fleeing the ravages of phylloxera in the mid to late nineteenth century, was the grape that defined the new era of Argentinian wine. 

Since the first plantings in Argentina in the 1550s, the best sites have been identified in the Andean heights above Mendoza. These sites are particularly suited to Malbec because there is no spring frost. Furthermore, the high altitude, with hot days and cool nights, ensures a long growing season which retains the acidity in the grape but enables full ripening. Nowhere else does the ripening of Malbec's sugars and aromas happen so harmoniously - though I do think that Washington state with its day/night temperature variations has great potential.

wines

 

Buoncristiani Napa Valley Malbec 2012 (c.$60)

Malbec is grown a surprisingly great deal around Napa Valley, though usually as an ingredient in Bordeaux blends. My problem with Napa wines is that although they have varietal character, they all taste too similar: high alcohol, aggressive tannins, and intense fruit and oak aromas.

This wine, a rare single-varietal Napa Malbec, suffers from this problem. Even though the grapes are grown on hillside vineyards, the alcohol is too high (15%) and the acidity not quite high enough. The grapes have ripened fully - Malbec does not have the same problem in Napa that it does in Bordeaux - so there are lots of ripe blackberries and cherries. A great wine to go with steak, but it's impossible to justify the price. ✪✪✪✪

Maryhill Clifton Bluff Vineyard Wahluke Slope Malbec 2012 ($25)

A defining characteristic of Washington reds is their acidity: the cool nights throughout the growing season keep it refreshingly high. In this wine from Wahluke Slope, that acidity lifts the drying tannins and smoky oak. The hot days, meanwhile, produce fruity wines and there is plenty of ripe blackberry, blueberry, and mulberry - all typical of Malbec. ✪✪✪✪

Perdriel Colección Malbec 2009 ($20)

The best wine of the four, this shows why Mendoza does Malbec so well. Very good value, and with immediate, fun, yet complex aromas of roasted almonds and hazelnuts, cedar and smoke, and chocolate and coffee, with ripe tannins and high alcohol, held together by good acidity. ✪✪✪✪✪

Leval Malbec 2013 ($9.99) 

I couldn't find a Cahors wine at the last minute, so I had to settle for a Malbec from the Languedoc. This wine was so appalling it's best not to describe it: I've been reluctant to use it even as cooking wine. French wines like this one are not going to compete with Argentinian Malbec. ✪ 

*If I find a Cahors wine soon, I shall add it to the blog as a more meaningful comparison to Argentina.*

*Update 12 July 2015*

Château Haut-Monplaisir Cahors 2012 ($14.99)

Even in K&L, one of San Francisco's most international wine stores, there were only three wines from Cahors available. For the price, this is a very well integrated wine, with a nice intensity of ripe, almost jammy, black and blue fruits and a good structure from the dry, gripping tannins and high acidity. This wine is evidence that Cahors is responding to the international demand for fruity, forward Malbecs, while retaining a rustic, regional identity. It's certainly a pity that the wines aren't more readily available: if you're going to drink French Malbec, it really should come from Cahors. ✪✪✪✪

For all the romance of European place names, Malbec is successful because of single-varietal wines from Argentina. And this is where grape and place come together. Mendoza is so ideal for Malbec that the two are now synonymous. Just as Cahors expresses its remote rusticity through its Malbec wines, so too does Mendoza its sense of place: hot days and cold nights, high mountains, and beef steak, all in a bottle of wine.