Malbec now was served at tables across England and Ireland. The union allowed Aquitaine, now under English rule, to sell the Cahors wines alongside those from Bordeaux across the channel. Their wedding was most likely drenched in Malbec, the royal wine, as chronicled by the era’s historians. 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.Īfter fifteen years of marriage, Eleanor divorced Louis VII and renounced the French crown to marry Henry II of England. Why is the Malbec known as “the black wine?” The exact origin of the term is unknown. In Bordeaux, producers used it to lend more color to their clarets. 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.Īccording 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. At age fifteen, she was married to the man who would soon become Louis VII of France. 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.Įleanor preferred the wine from her region over the offerings from the Loire and Burgundy generally chosen by the Parisian aristocracy. Eleanor inherited a third of present-day France, the Duchy of Aquitaine, from her father. 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. 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. 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. 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 was here that the first mention of the grape was recorded, although its precise origins continue to be a mystery. 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.Īround 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. 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. These days Pinot Noir is the lighter, paler and more delicate of the two.ĭNA analysis carried out in France in 2009 determined that Magdeleine Noire was the mother of the Malbec, and Prunelard its father. It is likely that Malbec was a catalyst for the transition of Bordeaux wines into the more concentrated style we know today. 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. 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 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. Malbec’s long, eventful history in France is reflected in the number of different names it was given over the years. It is impossible to deny the grape’s glorious European past. 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. 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. In Argentina, many people think of Malbec as a local variety.
0 kommentar(er)
