This weekend, starting Friday evening, Cahors was the world capital of Malbec. Wine makers, producers, marketers and experts gathered in Cahors for 3 days of exchanges, talks, tastings and fun.
Inaugural celebration
Friday night, Cahors officials welcomed their guests in the beautiful Cahors "lounge" - a space decorated as a lounge wine bar near the gorgeous Valentré bridge whose 700th anniversary happens to be this same year. Along the walls of the big room, several of the best Cahors, Touraine and Argentina producers offered their wines for tasting. Their wines graced the food catered by the best chefs of the region: cappuccino of mushrooms, lamb, duck, foie gras were among the delicacies offered as well as great chocolate and meringue desserts - whose flavors exploded against the spiciness of Malbec. Orchestras and DJs entertained the happy crowd until late in the evening.
International conference
Saturday morning, everybody was back to work at 8:30 am for the international conference on "Malbec, grape of the 21st century", as Robert Parker named it. Several speakers shared the podium: Nicolas Vivas made a very clear presentation of the chemical components of the Malbec grape. During the panel discussion that followed his speech, journalists, wine makers and experts from France and Argentina commented on the quality of the Malbec grape, its development in the world, how to market it and its image. Cristina Pandolfi gave us - in an impressive French - a great overview of the wine industry and the place of Malbec in this industry in Argentina. She was followed by Yohann Castaing, wine consultant in Bordeaux, who dug on the Internet all the mentions of words on Malbec. His analysis based on data mining showed that:
- the Malbec grape is easy to market, tasted as frutiy and spicy, answers the tastes of the younger consumers and is trendy, is considered a qualitative grape.
- the image of the producing ares are good: the image of Argentine is based on a good QPR, on trends and business but is still a little blurred in the consumer's mind; the image of Cahors rests on the "black wine" tradition, its famous terroir and its high quality.
- the consumer has difficulty differentiating Malbec, Cahors and Argentina; the Malbec has a good image by itself and not so much in relation to its producing region.
The recommendations of Yohann Castaing to market successfully the Malbec are to:
- associate the Malbec's image to tradition and modernism and
- differentiate Argentina and Cahors Malbecs through the true values of each region.
His presentation was followed by the one of the consulting firm Eranos from Paris on the imaginary dimension of the Malbec grape. The speaker valued the symbolic color of the Malbec, the black. Black is the color of unity, since it's the sum of the primary colors. It unifies Argentina, country of purity and Cahors, city of the world.
Tasting on the Valentré Bridge
After the conference, listeners, speakers and officials gathered on the bridge to taste the wines of over 100 producers from Cahors, Touraine, Argentina and eat the food cooked again by the best chefs of the Lot area. We'll put on line in the next few days the complete list of producers and wines selected for the event.
The Friendship Pact between City of Cahors and the Province of Lujan in Argentina
After an evening spent discovering wines and food from France and Argentina, officials and journalists gathered at the Town Hall to sign the Friendship Pact between the City of Cahors and the Province of Lujan. The eventful but tiring day ended by an offical dinner in one of the best restaurants of Cahors.
On Sunday, the "fiesta" continued. The bridge was open to everybody who could taste wine and food for free all day.
