Extremely Rare 96-Point French Red
- 96 pts Decanter World Wine Awards96 pts DWWA
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2016 Château Lamagdelaine Noire Malbec Cahors 750 ml
- Curated by unrivaled experts
- Choose your delivery date
- Temperature controlled shipping options
- Get credited back if a wine fails to impress
“The Black Wine of Cahors”
This Lamagdelaine Noire is the kind of rare discovery we wake up every morning hoping to find, and find it we did—after putting boots on the ground in Cahors to convince Janicot Vignobles to relinquish some of its small production just for us. That took a year, but it was worth it the second we were reunited with this tooth-staining beauty back on our soil.
There are wines of intensity, and then there is this 2016 blockbuster, delivering pound-for-pound in the kind of richness and concentration we love in Napa Cabernet, but with a markedly European accent. It's a terroir-driven 96-point red that is absolutely bursting with value.
On an arid plateau 100 miles southeast of Bordeaux, Cahors is the ancestral home of Malbec, or Côt, as it’s called there. Long before Argentina was even a country, Malbec from this region was prized in aristocratic circles from medieval courts to the ancient Romans, who dubbed it “the black wine of Cahors.” Today, the region is as Old-World as they come—a relatively tourist-free wine hub where castles are casual scenery, and Michelin-starred chefs quietly work their magic with truffles, foie gras, and a once-forgotten wine that has gotten very, very good.
This Lamagdelaine Noire is 96-point proof. It's born of hard-working 30-40-year-old vines that produce ultra-concentrated grapes and an even deeper wine, while the calcium component in Cahors’ famed limestone soils brings out all that pigment. The grapes also maintain an impressive level of acidity late into the growing season, adding a welcome lift on the finish.
On the palate, envision a Mendoza Malbec on steroids: Bold and powerful with a chiseled muscular structure, layers of dark plum and blackberry jam are cut through with waves of Old-World acidity and grippy tannins that beg for grilled lamb—a perfect foil for the fresh-roasted espresso and savory herbs that linger on the finish. It’s built to age but impossible to resist in the near term.