2019 Château de Mercuès-Georges Vigouroux, Grand Vin, Malbec de Cahors, France.
The deep purple, inky and garnet hued Cahors from Georges Vigouroux of Château d Mercuès is a classic 85 % Malbec and 15% blend that has rich palate of blackberry, blueberry, plum and cherry fruits with a firm tannic core and subtle cedary wood notes, as well as delicate earthiness, light violet florals, wild herbs, licorice and stony loam notes. More traditional in focus, with a full bodied palate this Château de Mercuis brings back my memories of my own early experiences with Cahors, though less rustic or dusty in profile and provides Malbec a good base to show offers best qualities. As I’ve said before here, before Argentina’s rise in use of the Malbec grape, Cahors was synonyms with this varietal, which can also be known as Côt, as it is known in the Loire, and it is good to be reminded of that, and to have wines such Château de Mercuis and one of my favorites Clos La Coutale, a long time go to Malbec. The Vigouroux family’s Château de Mercuès, a fourth generation estate now, dates back to 1887 here in Cahors and Georges Vigouroux was passionate of its history, especially with Malbec, which has since Roman times been known as he “Black Wine” locally. Now Bertrand-Gabriel Vigouroux continues the family traditions here, with four separate wineries and various vineyard sites, with limestone and clay based soils, from which to express this grape, with this bottling being a more traditional and hearty effort. The Grand Vin was 100% de-stemmed and fermented in vat with long cool maceration, extracting that dark opaque color and good tannic structure, after which the wine was matured in oak for at least a year to refine the robust nature here.
Cahors, an ancient almost forgotten region in France’s almost feral Southwest, is seeing a Renaissance with many amazing new generation winemakers and wines that have taken this historic area to new levels of quality and excitement, with Emmanuel Rybinski’s Clos Troteligotte Malbecs, which have a cult following being some of the most beautiful and exotic in the old world, and Fabien Jouves, who is also making more natural style Cahors wines with his Mas del Perie label is one of the region’s brightest stars, rounding out a place more known for rustic and chewy wines, while Château de Mercuès pays tribute to the more old school versions, but clean in style. Cahors, a former Roman town, was a center of commerce during the Middle Ages, which is seen as a remote and hard edged country wine region, though as mentioned, actually has highly entertaining and serious (wine) history, the area dates back to Celtic times when it was known as Divona, but really became famous during Roman times, in fact it was one of the most import wine producing treasures of their empire. Originally Cahors supplied the Roman armies with dark and powerful black wines, which legend has it aided in their conquest and was a reward for their many victories! Little known and remembered, is that it was the shipping of these Cahors wines, that made Bordeaux a thriving port and have have been instrumental in giving the locals there the idea of commercial wine production of their own, cutting out the long distance hauling of barrels overland to Bordeaux. The revival of Cahors is a good comeback story and it is nice to see such an interesting mix of offerings and this Château de Mercuès, which is best with meaty and or high protein cuisine, is great way to discover this region and the Malbec grape.
($25 Est.) 91 Points, grapelive