The International Event For three days, Cahors became the capital of Malbec. Producers from the Cahors area and from Argentina presented their wines on the historical bridge of Cahors. Authors and VIP from France and Argentina spoke about Malbec. Technical information on the wines The event was a resounding success and we will publish more articles about it here soon. For technical information on the wines presented, please see this page.

Established near Cahors, Amanda Lawrence is a writer and journalist. Why such a title for a book? "White stone" refers to the white Quercy, - named for its white stone - a wild, sparsely populated area of rural France. As an Englishwoman, she experienced the joys of rural life and the pleasures of tasting the local delicacies, including the Black Wine of Cahors.

Read more about Amanda's book.

I'm a little late in ackowledging the post of our Irish friend, Lar, from sourgrapes.ie who posted a comment on Malbec of Cahors on his blog.

Lar answered our post, Argentina and Cahors united under the Malbec banner, by saying: "

From an Irish consumer perspective, I stand by what I wrote. You can see it play out on the shelves of supermarkets and more specialised wine shops.

Malbec from Argentina is quite a bit cheaper, more widely available and easier to drink than most of those from Cahors.

That said, I’m a big fan of Cahors and I’ll seek them out."

It's true we don't know all our local markets and we're glad for the information. Moreover, it seems that Lar is fan of Malbec:

"Rather than being a zero sum game with one winner and one loser, I think jointly promoting Malbec is a fantastic approach.

The last thing I want to see is a McDonalds/Starbucks-type homogeneity in wine, so I’m all for the joint promotion of Malbec, a grape that offers something different and something very special."

Many thanks to Lar for his post and his interest in our wines. Feel free to read his complete post on his blog and his tasting notes.

The International Days showed how Argentina and Cahors can work together to promote this difficult but rewarding grape. Unfortunately, the message didn't reach everybody and we might read from time to time some unfortunate comments such as those published in the blog sourgrapes.com: "[...]the new threat to Cahors could be said to be Argentinian Malbec, which is getting better and better. Poor Cahors will never have it easy." On the contrary, Argentina and Cahors signed several partnerships and are working together on Malbec. Even more important, the historical background of the Malbec of Cahors will give its legitimacy to the more recent Argentinian Malbec while the success of the Argentinian wines will help Cahors grow its reputation on the international markets.

The International Days generated a renewed and now continuing interest on the Franch Malbec of Cahors. Two Sorbonne academics presented at our convention a study on the color black: is it legitimate to talk today of "black wine" for Cahors? Yes, was their answer: black is the color of Cahors because historically the wine of Cahors is recognized as the "black wine", because Argentinian wines illustrate their labels with tango dancers in black, because black is a consensual color uniting Cahors and Argentina.

If you read French, you'll enjoy this bright study on black and wine.