Grape: Malbec
Wine: Pont Du Diable 2014, Cahors, France. Bought from Laithwaites.
Alc Vol: 12.5%
Hugh Johnson says: “Dark, dense, tannic but fleshy wine capable of real quality…Bringing Cahors back into fashion.”
Label says: A lot of fanciful stuff about legends of pacts with the devil. Some of the flavours – “juicy spiced plum, blackberry and black cherry flavours finishing on a lingering note of liquorice” are almost as fanciful. To quote HJ, from the 2016 edition of his Pocket Wine Book, on this growing tendency towards hyperbolic descriptions of flavours: “it’s a glass of wine – tasting of wine – not a selection from the greengrocer’s.”
Food: “enjoy with French classics such as cassoulet, confit of duck, grilled beef entrecôte and well-matured cheeses.” We drank it with slow roasted belly pork and fried potatoes.
Did we like it? Yes, it was delicious (and I did taste the liquorice.)
One for the wine rack? Very possibly, though I’d like to compare it with some Malbecs from Argentina.
It’s not about the wine: The city of Cahors was mentioned in Dante’s Inferno as wicked, because it was infamous for having bankers who charged interest on their loans. The church said that using money as an end in itself (usury) was a sin.
The Wine List is my retirement project to sample all of the main grape varieties listed by Hugh Johnson in his annual Pocket Wine Book.
