Grapes: Malbec
Region: Cahors, France
Vintage: 2022
Viticulture: Biodynamic
Soils: Limestone
Vinification: Each plot has an average age of around 40 years (2023) and naturally ferments in separate concrete vats with 10% of whole bunches between three weeks to a month. Because Malbec already provides a lot of substance from its very thick skin, he does a single short pump-over every two days to preserve the hygiene of the cap of about 300 liters in total of the 50hl vat.
Aging: After fermentation, the grapes are pressed and mixed with the free-run wine and aged for 11-13 months equally between Italian terracotta amphora, old 30hl French oak vats and six-year-old 225l French oak barrels. They’re lightly filtered at bottling without any added sulfites.
Fining or Filtering: Light filtration
Sulfur: None added
Notes from the Importer: After twenty-five years as a sommelier, wine wholesaler and the owner of a Parisian wine bar, forty-eight-year-old Cahors native, Laurent Marre, found himself in a hospital bed. Unexpected life-threatening circumstances and four months confined to a hospital can change anyone’s perspective. After he was released, Laurent and his wife, Nathalie, started to plan a return to Laurent’s familial homeland. Since 2018, they’ve been raising horses (Nathalie’s métier, along with plowing the vineyards) and farming eight biodynamic hectares of vines on their 30-hectare plot surrounded by forest on one of Cahors’ geologically diverse and high-altitude limestone plateaus.