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I am a great fan of the Lot département (46 Midi-Pyrenees), initially from wine-hunting around the town of Cahors, and more recently further upstream on the Rivers Lot and Célé, where the landscapes get even more enticing. A recent trip was greatly enhanced by having Helen Martin’s book Lot: Travels Through a Limestone Landscape in SouthWest France, which tells the story of the landscape and people of this region of South West France.
It was her recommendation which led us to the stunning view at Reilhaguet (46 Lot) (see above) which she accurately describes as “the view to end all views, a roof of the world view, a heart-stopping, aching, yearning view” (about 25km north of Cahors just east of the N20).
But one of the undoubted joys of the region has to be its gastronomy and the richness of its markets, and with Helen’s permission we can share an extract from her chapter on “Food and Drink in the Lot”

Eating and drinking in the Lot is not so much gastronomy, it is more a way of life. Simple pleasures like early-morning mushrooming results in gastronomic treats at meal times.
The food used to revolve around the polyculture practised by the small propriétaires, less so today. But fruits are still bottled, geese are still stuffed, pigs are fattened, påtés are tinned, ducks are turned into hunks of confit, and yellow chickens, dotted with oil and butter and legs akimbo, are forced into ovens to emerge an hour or so later, tasting simply sensational. It is a day-in, day-out, year-long occupation. Tout es bou per sa sason ‘To everything there is a season’ takes on new meaning. ©Helen Martin

Helen Martin writes more about the Lot in her blog at http://lotbook.blogspot.com/

To read more about Food and Wine in the Lot see……… [Read more →]

Regular readers will be aware the the Lot Valley in the South West of France features frequently in these pages – in many ways the essence of “deepest France”, it is less crowded than the Dordogne to the north and yet offers a wide variety of landscapes, pretty villages, great cuisine – and is home to the often under-rated Malbec-based wines of Cahors. Hence an essential recent purchase has been the revised edition of Helen Martin’s Book Lot: Travels Through a Limestone Landscape in SouthWest France, which is packed with insights, history and information on the Lot département (46) as part of the River’s journey from the Massif Central to its meeting with the Garonne near Aiguillon (47 Lot-et-Garonne, Aquitaine).

Helen has kindly allowed us to print an extract of the section on Cahors and its wines…….
Lot: Travels Through a Limestone Landscape in SouthWest France

Chapter 8 The Lot Valley: West of Cahors
Below Cahors, the valley of the Lot belongs to the vignerons and the vineyards of the black wine of Cahors, châteaux-country in fact, but in times gone by it also belonged to the bishops of Cahors, who worked and played but mostly – in that great Christian tradition – fought along its banks.
Downstream of Luzech, the really wild cliffs you see to the east of Cahors become a thing of the past, replaced by gentler, graceful slopes, albeit with a certain grandeur to them, that, even though they may end in cliffs, are less formidable and are called cévennes. The river idles its way through the countryside in deep loops, or cingles, and was used as a major artery for transporting goods from the thirteenth century.
Along its banks grow the vines, and it was mostly the wine from these vineyards which used to be sailed downstream to the Garonne and Bordeaux and from thence to the world. The wine of Cahors may have had its ups and down in more recent times, but the Romans were making wine here in the third century and it had something of a reputation even then, so this river trade is very ancient. Finally, though, and in spite of the efforts of competitive Bordeaux wine-makers, it was phylloxera which put paid to the wine, and thus the trade, in the 1880s. By the time it had revived again, there were better means of transport. But even when the river was at the height of its usefulness, transportation was not always guaranteed. You would be surprised to know how many times the Lot froze right over in winter; the end of the eighteenth century was a particularly critical time – in 1766 it was frozen solid for two and a half months.
In the early nineteenth century, on a river much improved with the passage of time by locks and aids to navigation, 300,000 tonnes of freight was carried down it each year, including an astonishing 90 million bottles of wine – three times the number produced today. However, just as it was phylloxera that killed the river’s wine trade, so it was the coming of the railway that killed the river as a serious form of transport. In more recent years, though, it is coming to life again as leisure craft ply their way up and down, no doubt bringing new problems of pollution.
The villages along this western stretch of the river, unsurprisingly enough, are notable for their wine-producers’ houses – usually big and square with bolets or pigeonniers and sometimes both. You will notice, also, the use of decorative brickwork, the bricks being produced along the valley. [Read more →]

The Observer (27 April 08) features a visit to Chateau Lagrezette in Cahors (46 Lot, Midi-Pyrenees), owned and restored by Alain Dominique Perrin, a controversial figure in the Cahors wine community, who was the key figure in Cartier’ luxury goods empire.

His vigorous approach to marketing and the production of high value wines has not always been popular with traditionalists in the area, who fear that whilst he may be promoting the name of Cahors, his wines tend to be too commercial and distant from the traditional character of the appellation. Certainly other winemakers are making extraordinarily good top quality wines, whilst still retaining distinctive Cahors character.There is also the inevitable local suspicion about a wealthy incomer in what has been one of the poorest départements in France.

Lunch in the farmhouse kitchen is nowhere near as terrifyingly chic as I’d feared. Instead, his son Clement, a 27-year-old musician, and his winery manager, Jean Courtois, sit with him at a long wooden table in front of an open fire and eat ratatouille made with vegetables from the kitchen garden, herbed chicken with braised endive, goats’ cheese from Rocamadour and an amazing tarte tatin, all prepared by housekeeper Nadia, while Perrin explains how he restored his vineyards.

Lagrézette’s vineyards are some of the oldest in France and there are references to them from the 1500s. But they were decimated in the last century by the vine disease phylloxera and then by flooding in the 1950s. At the request of the locals, who had seen and approved of Perrin’s work on the château, he set about bringing them back, ripping out the unimpressive hybrids that had replaced the original diseased Malbec plants, replacing them with new Malbecs on three-quarters of the estate and Merlot and Tannat grapes everywhere else. He brought in renowned wine expert Michel Rolland to help in 1989, but remained closely involved himself.

‘Monsieur Perrin,’ says Courtois, ‘is above all interested in… quality. Quality is the most important thing to him in all things.’

The château’s winery was built from scratch, although it incorporates some original pieces, like the enormous wooden door, which dates from before the French Revolution, and a large stone fountain picked up in Toulouse. Having decided it should be built underground, Perrin had the hillside dug out, built the cellars and the workrooms, and then replaced the soil on top, no small feat considering the winery is 55m long and 19m deep. Now all that is visible from outside is the winery’s beautiful fascia. The final touch was a 150m tunnel connecting the winery with the château.

At the end of the tunnel you find yourself in a tasting room, formerly one of the château’s cells. ‘This is where Monsieur Rolland comes to blind-taste each vintage,’ explains Courtois. ‘It is also haunted, like most of the castle.’ In the course of the restoration, Perrin made a macabre discovery: the ruins of an oubliette, a dungeon that opened only from the top, into which people were thrown, literally to be forgotten. It contained human and animal bones that Perrin had analysed. ‘The theory is that it was probably closed up in the 18th century, and erased from the records because it was a source of such shame.’ Perrin claims that the circular bedroom at the top of the south tower, where his friends Tina Turner, Elton John, Richard Gere, Cindy Crawford and Tony Blair stay when they drop in for a weekend, is also subject to visitations from former inhabitants.

The Chateau has a nicely designed and informative website and blog – see www.chateau-lagrezette.tm.fr

Whilst the wines of Lagrezette are undoubtedly of high quality, personally I would prefer the wines of Chateau du Cedre or Chateau Eugenie.

Chateau Lagrezette Cahors AC is available from www.bertrandandnicholaswines.co.uk amongst others.

See our customised Google Map of the Lot and Cahors

Cahors from South West France claims to be the birthplace of the Malbec grape, known locally as Auxerrois or Cot, now more familiar to UK wine enthusiasts as a result of the growing popularity of South American Malbecs.
Jonathan Ray in the Telegraph (24 Mar 07) features Dominique Perrin’s Chateau Lagrezette. Perrin was head of Cartier, the luxury goods company, hence his arrival in the provincial Lot departement was quite a complement.
Producing top end wines he brought modern packaging and marketing strategies to the project with great success.
But it appears he has fallen out with the other top prodcuers (such as Chateau le Cedre, Clos Truguedina) and has left the “Seigneurs de Cahors” (Lords of Cahors) group and is now “prefers to go it alone and promote Lagrézette as Lagrézette rather than as a Cahors.”.
Now there is no doubt whatsoever that Chateau Lagrezette produces excellent wines – Robert Parker has awarded an impressive 95 points for Le Pigeonnier 2001. But therein may lie the problem. For one thing Parker tends to prefer a rich oaky style of wine in the tradtion of the best of Bordeaux. Secondly whilst it is clearly possible to create a great and very marketable wine in Cahors, does the result really reflect the essential character of Cahors wines??
This can be a real dilemma for distinctive appellations such as Cahors. I suspect that most tasters will be able to differentiate an Argentinean Malbec from an equivalent quality Cahors. The Cahors.will tend to be more complex with more evident tannins – but that then is the nature of Cahors and gives it distinctiveness.
Using modern techniques it is possible to refine and smooth the wine to produce something which has wider or more sophisticated appeal – but is it Cahors??
This is a real dilemma for traditional wine and food producers – if we are not careful we could homogenise the wonderful diversity and idiosyncracies of local produce into something which no-one can dislike.
However, do try Chateau Lagrezette, I am sure you will find an extraordinarily fine wine – but also try other Cahors wines such as those offered by Advintage Wines

LINKS:-
See the Telegraph article
Website for Chateau Lagrezette
UK stockists include Four Walls WIne Co, East Sussex
Other Cahors wines from stockists such as Advintage Wines

Recommended reading:-
Andrew Jefford’s The New France: A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine (Mitchell Beazley Wine Guides)
South West France – The Wines & Winemakers by Paul Strang