Excerpt from Malbec Mon Amour. By: Laura Catena and Alejandro Vigil
In Argentina, many people think of Malbec as a local variety. And those who know a little more about its history see the grape as an immigrant whose splendid adaptation makes her Argentine through and through. This would be all well and good if it weren’t for the fact that Malbec has been so extensively documented in France’s wine bibliography. It is impossible to deny the grape’s glorious European past.
Malbec’s long, eventful history in France is reflected in the number of different names it was given over the years. In the mid 1960s, the French ampelographer Pierre Galet identified more than a thousand different terms for Malbec depending on where it was grown or whomever introduced it to the region in question. For instance, it’s known as Côt in the Loire Valley, Malbec or Malbec Doux in Gironde, Luckens or Lutkens in Médoc, Pressac in the Libourne area of Bordeaux, Côte Rouge in Entre-deux-Mers and Lot-et-Garonne, and Auxerrois or Côt Noir in Cahors, capital of the former province of Quercy.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Bordeaux clarets were light and almost pink in color, as opposed to their competition, Burgundian Pinot Noir, which was dense, fruity and deeply colored. It is likely that Malbec was a catalyst for the transition of Bordeaux wines into the more concentrated style we know today. These days Pinot Noir is the lighter, paler and more delicate of the two.
DNA analysis carried out in France in 2009 determined that Magdeleine Noire was the mother of the Malbec, and Prunelard its father. The former, which also gave birth to Merlot, comes from the Charentes region, about 80 miles north of Bordeaux, while the fruity and tannic Prunelard hails from Gaillac, located between Bordeaux and Cahors. The cross-pollination probably occurred on the banks of the River Lot in Cahors, perhaps before France was conquered by Roman legions or later, in the Middle Ages.
Around 150 A.D., the city of Cahors, which was known as Divona at the time, was the Roman capital of the province of Quercy in what is now France. It was here that the first mention of the grape was recorded, although its precise origins continue to be a mystery. Malbec might have come to Divona from Italy, brought by the Roman invaders, or perhaps it was already in France when the Romans arrived in Gaul, and they simply adopted it and continued its cultivation. It is also featured in literary history: praise for the ancient wine of Cahors can be found in the Odes of Horace and in Virgil’s poems.
Historians agree that in spite of the foreign invasions that occurred during the decline of the Roman empire, Malbec retained its reputation and continued to be grown.
When we get to the Middle Ages, the story of Malbec becomes inextricably entwined with that of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204) the only woman ever to be queen of both France and England. Eleanor inherited a third of present-day France, the Duchy of Aquitaine, from her father. Malbec plantations are thought to have extended beyond Cahors down to the Pyrenees (Madiran) in the South and across the eastern bank of the Dordogne River from Saint-Émilion to Côtes de Bourg.
Eleanor preferred the wine from her region over the offerings from the Loire and Burgundy generally chosen by the Parisian aristocracy. At age fifteen, she was married to the man who would soon become Louis VII of France. Later on, the “black wine,” as Malbec would come to be known, most likely flowed at Eleanor’s Courts of Love, festivals of music and poetry where Malbec grew to be appreciated as the wine of the nobility.
According to oral tradition, the Malbec grape expanded from its native Cahors to Bordeaux in the 18th century, introduced by a Hungarian winemaker called Malbeck or Malbek. In Bordeaux, producers used it to lend more color to their clarets.
Why is the Malbec known as “the black wine?” The exact origin of the term is unknown. The epithet could be related to the belief that harvesting the grapes at night improved the quality of the wine, or to the fact that Malbec’s intense color left dark stains on teeth and tongue.
After fifteen years of marriage, Eleanor divorced Louis VII and renounced the French crown to marry Henry II of England. Their wedding was most likely drenched in Malbec, the royal wine, as chronicled by the era’s historians.
The union allowed Aquitaine, now under English rule, to sell the Cahors wines alongside those from Bordeaux across the channel. Malbec now was served at tables across England and Ireland. The children of Henry II and Eleanor who came to the throne, Richard the Lionheart and King John, continued to trade with Cahors and promote the wine.
But an enterprising bureaucrat also played a major role in the growth of wine exports from the Cahors region. In having the boulders removed from the River Lot, which runs through the area, he ensured that circulation and shipping from the interior would be greatly facilitated, much to the benefit of local wine producers. The move also spawned the birth of a rivalry with Bordeaux, whose officials introduced new taxes and restrictions to limit the spread of Malbec from Cahors. To stem this, Henry III of England placed Cahors wine under his personal protection, meaning that Bordeaux officials could not restrict its transport or sale.
English traders soon recognized a good business opportunity at hand, and turned Cahors into a major urban and financial center. The main thoroughfare to foreign markets was the port of La Rochelle, which also flourished as an economic powerhouse. Centuries later, Alexandre Dumas would choose the port as setting for his classic The Three Musketeers.
The grape’s prestige continued to rise, and by the 16th century, France’s Francis I, who was originally from Aquitaine, took such a great liking to Malbec that the grape came to be known as the Plante du Roi (the King’s Plant). The sovereign planted Malbec around his Palace of Fontainebleau and at his favorite retreat, the Vauluisant Abbey north of Dijon. It was also the dawn of the French Renaissance, and the king’s influence made itself felt in the art world. He brought none other than Leonardo da Vinci to his court. It is thanks to Francis I that the Mona Lisa hangs today in the Louvre Museum.
And let’s not forget that the Catholic Church uses wine in its central act of worship: the Mass. History records that when a cobbler’s son from Cahors was chosen to be Pope John XXII (1244–1334), he declared Malbec to be the preferred communion wine. When the Pope was living in Avignon during the Schism with Rome, he grew Malbec at his palace. That’s not all: By the end of the 17th century, the variety had also become the sacramental wine of the Russian Orthodox Church. Tsar Peter the Great had chosen it as a cure for his stomach ulcers. In fact, Peter had Malbec vines brought from Cahors to Russian Crimea, where it became known as Caorskoie.
Malbec’s storied past is marked by historical serendipity, territorial alliances, sacred uses and healthy attributes. Popes, kings, and nameless bureaucrats all had a role in establishing the grape as one of the most important varieties on the European viticultural stage.
