Château Les Croisille Cahors Cocoricot

About Château Les Croisille Cahors Cocoricot

Château Les Croisille Cahors Cocoricot is made from a carbonic maceration of Merlot and Malbec. Notes of black fruit yogurt, blackberry and spices.

About Château Les Croisille

Converted to organic farming in 2013, the ambition of Château Les Croisille is to vinify by terroir, understanding the richness of the different soils of the Causse and the Lot valley to get a little closer to the purity of great wines.

Since 1979, the Croisille family (Cécile, Bernard, and their son Germain) has been working on the vines, where Malbec is king, and on the vinification, to offer a range of fine, complex, and mineral wines, which are anything but ordinary!

About Cahors

Cahors is a small town and red wine appellation in South West France, located 100 miles (160km) east of Bordeaux. In wine terms, it is known for its deeply colored reds made predominantly from Malbec (known locally as both Côt and Auxerrois), with small quantities of Tannat and Merlot. Interestingly, Cahors is the only red wine appellation in the South West that does not sanction the use of Cabernet Sauvignon or Franc.

The typical Cahors wine is darkly colored and has a meaty, herb-tinged aroma, with hints of spiced black cherries and a whiff of cedar. Cahors is invariably tighter and leaner than the rich, opulent style of Malbec being made in the variety’s newfound home in Mendoza, Argentina.

Cahors lies roughly equidistant from both the Atlantic coast (to the west) and the Mediterranean coast (to the southeast). As a result, the climate here is subject to multiple influences: continental, maritime, and Mediterranean.

Summer days are warmer and sunnier than in Bordeaux, making it easy for the local vignerons to achieve full phenolic ripeness in their grapes. This is important for Malbec and even more so for tannin-rich Tannat, which can be astringent if not properly ripened.

The rainfall here is significantly lower than on the Atlantic coast (780mm a year, compared with 930mm in Bordeaux). Consequently, the risk of fungal issues in the Cahors vineyards is quite low, minimizing the amount of disease-preventive spraying required.

The dry climate also means that vines experience slight hydric stress, forcing them to dig deep, strong root systems in search of water, and also increasing the concentration of sugars and phenolic compounds in the grapes.

Entirely based in the Lot department, the official Cahors viticultural area spreads for over 40km (25 miles) along a tightly meandering section of the Lot River around, and to the west of, the town of Cahors itself. Roughly 20km (12 miles) wide (north-to-south), the area covers both banks of the river and its western boundary runs along the Lot’s border with the Lot-et-Garonne department.

The only neighboring wine region (other than the IGP Côtes du Lot that covers the department) is that of the Coteaux du Quercy which lies immediately to the south and runs into the Tarn-et-Garonne.

The key vineyard sites for Cahors wines are roughly divided into two categories. Those on the limestone plateaux of the area (known as the Causses) produce more tannic, longer-lived wines. Those on the gravelly slopes and terraces between the plateaux and the rivers turn out more approachable, fruitier wines.

The Lot river rises in the hills of the Massif Central and winds slowly westwards through the southern French countryside before flowing into the Garonne, which then continues on to Bordeaux. This navigable link with the port of Bordeaux (and export markets beyond) was once of vital economic importance to Cahors’ winemakers.

The Bordelais also benefited from the connection, not just because they imposed high taxes on the incoming wines, but also because they blended the dark, rich Cahors wines with their own, which in those times often lacked color and depth. It wasn’t without good reason that Malbec was introduced to the vineyards of Bordeaux in the 18th Century.

The Lot is not the only river to have connected inland wine regions to Bordeaux; the Dordogne connected Bergerac and Monbazillac, while the Garonne (via the Tarn) connected Gaillac and Fronton.