Valérie Courrèges - Cahors ‘Ocrement-dit’, France (2020)

TASTING NOTES

Cahors that’s still quite grippy and angular but shows deliciously ripe and fleshy at its core. Wet earth, wild herbs, violets and heaps of pitch-black fruit, all swept up by a cool minty breeze. Structured but refreshing accompaniment to meaty cooking right now, but this will develop beautifully over the next few years.

100% Malbec from 50 year-old vines on red clay over limestone soils on the Cahors plateau. Vineyards in conversion to biodynamics, hand-harvested grapes, largely destemmed but uncrushed, vinified in separate parcels in concrete tanks. 12 months aging in concrete tank and clay pots, bottled unfined and unfiltered with minimal added sulphites.

Valérie Courrèges returned to her ancestral lands of Cahors in 2019 after a career as a hired oenologist at domaines in California, Chile and Provence. Together with husband Mathieu Cosse she had bought 22 ha of gravelly vineyards and an ambition is to make wines that would excite her grandfather.