MIPTC #23 - Fabien Jouves Cahors Haute Côt de Fruit 2021

Hey y'all! It's finally Friday, and it sure feels good. It's also December, which is a slightly odd thing for me to consider. I don't know about you folks, but I feel like has really hit warp speed since I turned 30. It's like I stepped in this time accelerator thing that keeps pushing me forward at hyper speed without me having any say on the matter.

But hey, enough complaining about fleeting time - this is not a Carly Silverman retrospective after all. Let's talk wine, folks!

I thought I'd try an interesting proposition from an avant-garde French winemaker. The idea is simple: let's take a varietal known for its austere, tannic and somewhat dusty character, and let's make a fruity, new school wine with it. It's surely an interesting experiment, and it's the kind of stuff I like to encourage, so in the shopping cart it immediately went.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of Cahors wines usually, and mostly for their hard to approach, austere style I just described. The varietal - which the French call "Côt" but you might know more as "Malbec" surely is partly to blame, but can't be the whole story. The grapes tend to have an inky dark color and robust tannins and are known as one of the six grapes allowed in the blend of red Bordeaux wine, and as a pure expression in places like Cahors.

Thing is, though I'm not particularly fond of Cahors, I loooove a good Argentinian Malbec, so Fabien Jouves' idea was an interesting one for sure: can we take Cahors and dust it off to make it more modern and approachable or will it have to remain the stuff you'll find stuffed in your great uncle's damp basement cellar? Let's see.

(Yes, my wife has incredible nails. Get over it.)

The Skinny

• From: Cahors, France

• Varietals: Côt 100%

• Price: $20,05 CAD

• Feature: Organic wine

Tasting Notes

On the nose, this has jammy red fruits written all over it. There's also some denser stuff like plums, liquorice, and maybe a bit of blueberry jam thrown in there. Though this is very fruit centric, I also get a faint note of sandalwood and leather, which aren't really surprising for the varietal. You can tell this is meant to be light and fruity, but it kind of seems out of character, which a bit of a nose-heavy tinge to the whole exercise.

On the palate, the out-of-character notion I just discussed is definitely confirmed. To slap an image onto it, this feels a bit like a gorilla in a tutu. You can tell it means to be light, airy and graceful - and it kind of is - but it also fails to shed away its heavyweight status in the process. Tannins are soft, but still very present, and the acidity fails to carry all the dense texture and matter the wine puts forward. The fruit notes are nice and juicy, but definitely more on the ripe black fruit side than the nose would have had you believe. Though at a surprisingly low 13% ABV, there is a fair bit of alcoholic burn on the finale, which kind of leaves one wanting.

Cutting To The Chase: Does It Please The Cork?

I am really grateful to see Jouves attempt this, and he gets a lot of points for trying this out. It wasn't easy to do to start, so perhaps it is not surprising that this hasn't been executed perfectly.

By trying to do away with a style that suits the grape like a glove, however, I feel Jouves has failed to catch the wine's balance, and the result is a not-quite-heavy-but-not-quite-light product that I sadly think kind misses the mark on both ends. To me, the joie de vivre of a light wine style is high drinkability, and this kind of fell flat as all this matter and tannins just didn't have me reaching for another glass after I finished my first.

This is all a matter of taste, however, and I could see a lot of folks who like the dark inky stuff being into this, as it is a nice expression of a heavier wine done with a bit less weight. For me, however, it just fell into an awkward middle ground that I particularly didn't care for that much. I'll still give it 3 corks as it well made and all - just not for this wino.

Cork Score: 3/5*

***

*Here's the lowdown on the scores, by the way. Essentially, I don't believe in 100-point scales for things as subjective as wine. Simply put, I just don't think one can credibly justify a 1% or even a 10% increment between two wines. I therefore choose to go a bit more basic. Here's how I break it down:

• 1/5: Seriously faulty, terrible, undrinkable;

• 2/5: Flawed and/or of bad quality. This is the type of stuff you should probably cook with and not drink;

• 3/5: Decent. This is where most entries will end up. These wines are clean and well-balanced, but not particularly memorable and/or exceptional. They are recommendable, but not an experience per se;

• 4/5: Exceptional. I sadly drink few wines that get this rating, but my purpose is to drink more. This denotes a memorable bottle that brought up some kind of emotion in me. This left a mark, and odds are I am now busy recommending it to everybody I know;

• 5/5: Perfect. I think I have probably tasted less than 5 bottles that would have qualified for a 5/5 in my entire life. This denotes an absolutely incredible wine that will imprint a definite memory for years to come - a true experience in itself.