Causse du Theron En Pente Cahors Malbec 2021

Causse du Theron En Pente Cahors Malbec

Region: Cahors, South West France, France

Vintage: 2021

Bottle size: 75cl

Grape: Malbec

ABV: 13.5%

The ‘En Pente’ has aromas of black cherry, redcurrant and spices with mouth-watering acidity and round tannins. This wine showcases the alluring, bright Malbec fruit with a long, scented finish that is unmarred by oak.

This wine is named after the En Pente vineyard. The 28 hectare vineyard is located on terraces of Kimmeridgian limestone. The fruit for this wine comes from a 2 hectare plot towards the higher, steeper part of the slope.

After being harvested by hand, the grapes from the En Pente vineyard underwent fermentation at 28 °C in cement tanks using ambient yeasts. The wine spent 20 days on its skins with careful pump overs to aid extraction. The wine was then aged in tank, rather than oak, for two years to add roundness and to ensure the bright Malbec fruit shines through the finished wine. The wine was lightly filtered prior to bottling. No fining took place.

In 2013, Antonio Morescalchi, of Altos Las Hormigas in Argentina, and renowned soil-mapping expert Pedro Parra, visited Cahors to learn more about the origins of Malbec. The appellation's soil diversity fascinated the duo, especially in the vineyards planted on Kimmeridgian limestone terraces known as ‘causses’. “It took us five years to find limestone in Argentina, here, it took five minutes.” Pedro exclaims. As a result, they identified two remarkable vineyards to make wines from, ‘Terrasse’ and ‘En Pente’, founding Causse du Théron in the process. Today Antonio and Pedro work with talented winemakers Sebastien and Pierre Sigaud’s, whose father Jean-Marie drove the quality resurgence in Cahors and was early to recognise the potential of limestone-grown Malbec.