More about Chateau les Croisille

The Gironde is a mighty river that flows past some of the most famous châteaux on Earth before emptying into the Atlantic: Mouton, Lafite, Latour, and Margaux. Go upriver and you'll find a tributary called the Lot, and just up that tributary you find the medieval village of Cahors.

Cahors has grown Malbec (yes, that Malbec) for centuries. Its wines were prized by kings and queens. But in 1956, a frost wiped out the entire crop and the village fell into obscurity. Today, there isn't a single famous château in all Cahors.

We no longer care what kings and queens drink. Our taste-makers are more likely to sell wine, or write about it—maybe in a paper of record. And so we were very excited to see Eric Asimov write recently about Cahors in the New York Times.

Eric's message was clear: Cahors is back. But the details were fascinating.

Asimov distinguished two styles that have dominated Cahors: the up-stream Bordeaux knock-offs, and the wines modeled on Argentina's "ripe, fruity malbecs." To this we would add another distinction: between the heavier wines found lower down by the Lot, and the more mineral wines from the terraces found up on the hills.

The secret to that minerality is chalky limestone, calcaire in French. The Château les Croisille, one of the producers Asimov features, makes a wine from vineyards about as high as they get in Cahors. The site is so full of calcaire that the winemaker names his best wine after this soil.

So Cahors is back–in every respect except pricing and fame! Amazing growers are producing delicious wines on its top-flight terroirs. And yet, other than Asimov's article nobody seems to know about them... for now. So pricing is still phenomenal, especially considering the quality and seriousness of these wines.

How serious does Cahors get? Some friends from a great importer, people who get to open legendary wines, confided to us that their greatest bottle ever–the best wine they had ever tasted–was a humble Cahors from the 1947 vintage, just a few years before the frost that ended Cahors' glory. You can still see the empty bottle up on their wall of trophies.