Le Vent Des Jours

A blend of Malbec from their three different soil types picked at different times within a 10 to 12-day span, it is for this that Laurent’s mid-range Cahors, Les Calades, is the most accessible and widely appealing. He describes it as the flagship of their range, “a pure Malbec with power and freshness that represents the king grape variety of our appellation on limestone, and the new generation of Cahors: more fluid, rich and balanced with a distinct and very present mineral and marine finish.”

Each plot has an average age of around 40+ years and naturally ferments in separate concrete vats with 10% of whole bunches between three weeks to a month. Because Malbec already provides a lot of substance from its very thick skin, he does a single short pump-over every two days to preserve the hygiene of the cap of about 300 liters in total of the 50hl vat. After fermentation, the grapes are pressed and mixed with the free-run wine and aged for 11-13 months equally between Italian terracotta amphora, old 30hl French oak vats and six-year-old 225l French oak barrels. They’re lightly filtered at bottling without any added sulfites.

A blend of Malbec from their three different soil types picked at different times within a 10 to 12-day span, it is for this that Laurent’s mid-range Cahors, Les Calades, is the most accessible and widely appealing. He describes it as the flagship of their range, “a pure Malbec with power and freshness that represents the king grape variety of our appellation on limestone, and the new generation of Cahors: more fluid, rich and balanced with a distinct and very present mineral and marine finish.”

Each plot has an average age of around 40 years (2023) and naturally ferments in separate concrete vats with 10% of whole bunches between three weeks to a month. Because Malbec already provides a lot of substance from its very thick skin, he does a single short pump-over every two days to preserve the hygiene of the cap of about 300 liters in total of the 50hl vat. After fermentation, the grapes are pressed and mixed with the free-run wine and aged for 11-13 months equally between Italian terracotta amphora, old 30hl French oak vats and six-year-old 225l French oak barrels. They’re lightly filtered at bottling without any added sulfites.

With 90% of C’Juste composed of Gros Manseng grown on the large veins of white clay in warm-to-hot summer conditions and without added sulfites, we may expect its takeoff to be like the first throttle on the tarmac in a fast but chubby commercial liner; however, it’s more like (what I imagine) being pressed against the seat of screaming fighter jet during takeoff. We, for one, find C’Juste yet another impressive no-sulfites-added white wine that demonstrates what’s possible if done correctly in the cellar. It’s as inviting as it is electric, and once open the bottle tends to empty rather quickly.

Laurent describes C’Juste as, “a rich wine due to the typicity of Gros Manseng. From one year to the next, the Victoria pineapple side (a note not often found in colder and wetter climate Gros Manseng wines) remains the common thread, while the 10% of Ugni Blanc brings freshness and acidity—the lemon side on the finish. It’s for the meal rather than apero hour and can compete with a fine Chardonnay in terms of power and the freshness of a great Chenin Blanc.”

Once in the cellar, the grapes are first left for 24 hours in concrete to cool down, then they’re whole-cluster pressed before being returned to the same medium. At the end of the 10-15-day natural fermentation, the wine is racked off the gross lees into four 8hl Italian terracotta amphoras for 11 months before bottling. There is no sulfite added to this wine at any time, though the exception is the 2020 version. C’Juste is lightly filtered but not fined.