WINE OF THE WEEK: Château Haute-Borie Cahors Malbec 2023, Cahors, France

£14.70/£12.70, Tanners Wines

I’m chuffed that Tanners have added Château Haute-Borie to their list because I recommended the Sigaud family and their four Cahors estates to James Tanner last year (do I hear the sound of someone blowing her own trumpet?).

Unlike some chairmen and managing directors, James isn’t forever anchored at his desk shuffling papers and people in the hours either side of lunch. He gets out into the vineyards and cellars to look, talk, taste and buy. It's not the least of the reasons that Tanners’ list is so good.

I would say that Haute-Borie Cahors Malbec is good, of course, because it’s one of the Cahors I buy when I’m staying in the region – which I often am. But you don’t need to take it just from me.

A measure of the quality of the Sigaud family's steeply sloping limestone vineyards is that Antonio Morescalchi of Argentina’s Altos Las Hormigas together with the world-renowned soil and terroir consultant Pedro Parra chose two of the Sigaud vineyards for their own Cahors Malbec when they started producing there in 2013. And they chose Sebastien Sigaud, who runs the properties with his father and brother, to be their winemaker in situ.

What I like about Château Haute-Borie  Cuvée Tradition is as simple as this: it’s textbook Malbec from Cahors. If you like Argentine Malbec, you’ll like this, but Cahors has its own, distinctive, more mineral style thanks to the terroir.

There’s succulent, ripe blackberry fruit wrapped around the graphite minerality in this 2023, with bay-leaf spicy freshness and a hint of cocoa all flatteringly underpinned by satin-smooth tannins and herbal length. It's ready now but you could also cellar it for another four or five years.

The vines on the 18-ha estate have an average age of 35 years and the wine was vinified without sulphites and is essentially unoaked. Ten per cent goes into three and four-year-old barrels, the rest goes into stainless steel and concrete and the blend is then aged for 12 months in bottle.

Argentine Malbec is always cited as a wine for steak and you could certainly drink this with steak or roast beef, but I like it even more with lamb – everything from a nicely pink roast leg to slow-baked shoulder to barbecued chops or spicy Moroccan lamb meatballs. Duck, in the form of confit, magret or fresh sausage, is another good pairing, as are empanadas, stuffed vine leaves, stuffed peppers and vegetable or lentil cottage pie. 13.5%.

Château Haute-Borie Cahors Malbec 2023, Cahors, France

£14.70 or £12.70 when you buy 3 bottles, Tanners Wines

#wine #France #Malbec #wineandfood #winepairing #red