Last Wednesday provided an opportunity to trial a tasting I have long relished. There are three French appellations which strike me as institutionally undervalued: Cahors, Madiran and Bandol. They are, I’d suggest, potentially as fine as much from Bordeaux, Burgundy or the Rhône. Great varieties in great terroir, in other words. How do they differ? What’s the value like? And which is best?

My thanks to the Oxford Wine Society for allowing me to stage the tasting, at its regular venue: the Buttery at Wolfson College. It was the night of March 12th 2008. We thought about hiring an emergency dental team to stand by with heavy-duty tooth-buffers, though in the end the cost proved excessive. The innocent graduate students of Wolfson ran shrieking at the sight of what was obviously a conclave of vampires lurching its way out into the night afterwards: apologies, everyone.

Bit of background? Cahors is the biggest of the three: 4,200 ha/30 million bottles a year, compared to Madiran’s 1,650 ha/10 million bottles a year and Bandol’s 1,100 ha/ 5 million bottles a year. Bandol is the oldest AOC of the three (awarded 1941), whereas Madiran dates from 1948 and Cahors from 1971. That refers to recent history, of course; Cahors was making serious wine in Roman times, when much of the Médoc still had 1500 years as a swamp ahead of it.

In a way, the tasting was a comparison between three grape varieties: Malbec (Cahors), Tannat (Madiran) and Mourvèdre (Bandol). Each appellation specifies blends which involve other varieties, but the higher up the quality ladder you go, the more growers tend to champion the main variety.

Soil? River terraces of limestone, gravel and ironstone (Cahors) versus cool clay filled with limestone boulders (Madiran) versus a multi-textured limestone amphitheatre (Bandol). Cahors is said to have an Atlantic climate until June, then a Mediterranean climate for the rest of the season. Madiran is warm Atlantic; Bandol is hot Mediterranean (3,000 sunshine hours during the growing season). Another similarity between Madiran and Bandol, of course, is that both Tannat and Mourvèdre are reductive grape varities, so we spent a fair bit of time discussing the history of micro-oxygenation in Madiran and the use of big wood in Bandol. Some tasters objected to reductive notes in Bandol, whereas none did so with Madiran.

If you’re a barrique-hater, by the way, and you long to find a real choice of wines whose élevage is in the now-rare big wooden foudres rather than new small wood, Bandol should be a hunting-ground for you.

We tasted three wines from each AOC: Cahors first, then Bandol, then Madiran. Here they are, with my notes and scores. These notes were taken when I double-decanted the wines at 4 pm, but I didn’t greatly revise my opinions later: the final score verdict of all the tasters is given afterwards. One bottle of the Brumont Madiran was horribly corked, and one bottle of the Cèdre Cahors was cork-compromised (out of 36 bottles): a 5.5% contamination rate. Disappointing.

The Tasting

Cahors

2001 Clos Triguedina, 13%
Appearance: clear deep red.
Aroma: Warm, curranty, almost claretty. Red fruits, with a touch of tar and tobacco. Hint of something green? Fresh, refreshing and appetising.
Flavour: Fair weight of tannin and acid; lots of shy yet sinewy depths. Almost an apple note to the fruit, behind early raspberry. This would have good refreshment value with food. Brisk and rousing; fully ready now. I’d like to see just a little more ripeness here, and there’s a slight lack of integration between the different elements of the wine, but it’s very typical of its appellation, well-made, satisfying and forthright.
Score: 14.5/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £10.98

2001 Ch Lagrézette, 14%
Appearance: dark, opaque black.
Aroma: warm, sweet, full, yet the fruit spectrum is typical Cahors: elderberry, damson, wildfruits. Dominated by fruit rather than oak; beginning to turn savoury. Touch of thyme.
Flavour: softer tannins than the Triguedina, and much greater depth and intensity; it still has the classic high-acid-high-tannin Cahors profile, but there’s lots of softly extractive force behind those skeletal elements, and much greater aromatic power than for the Triguedina, too. Not yet mature: five to ten years to go. An iron touch to finish. Impressive wine.
Score: 16/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £13.22

2004 Ch du Cèdre, Prestige, 13.5%
Appearance: deep but not opaque. Substantial sediment when decanted.
Aroma: much more freshly fruity than the other two Cahors wines, with lots of juicy raspberry and elderberry and a little vanilla spice.
Flavour: frank, forthright, full, true, juicy and exuberant, but a smaller wine than the Lagrézette `01, and slightly simpler, too, with a lack of middle-palate width. (I recall the Prestige from Cèdre having more density than this in other vintages.) The sour-fruit mineral spectrum is correct and very true to place; great fun to drink, if not for keeping.
Score: 14/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £9.56

Bandol

2003 Domaine la Suffrène, 14.5%
Appearance: clear deep red.
Aroma: wonderfully unusual (as usual for Bandol). Rich, complex, harmonious … a kind of countryside soup, full of mint and thyme, deep cherry fruits, warm stones, mimosa blossom, tomatoes … satisfying and very un-international. A hint of curry leaf by the evening.
Flavour: tannic but fine grained, intense, dry: leather and liquorice and black olive, rummaged earth, spices, and dark chocolate, too. Just a hint of rubber behind. Note the softening and lightening effect of big wood compared with the darkening and thickening effect of barrique, especially when barrique-ageing is combined with lees work. Despite that wonderfully savoury flavour spectrum, it has a creamy, herby-sweet end. Very Provence and very fine. Has another 10 years ahead at least.
Score: 16.5/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £10.16

2003 Château de Pibarnon, 14%
Appearance: almost a pale red. Very clear.
Aroma: some bottle reduction: begins a bit hamster-like. Simmered tomato beneath. A short while later: stone, earth. This doesn’t have the aromatic beauty of the `03 Suffrène. Kerosene touch at end.
Flavour: intense, warm, rich, light tannins but deep and searching fruits, full of liquorice-tinged dry cherry, prune, thyme and pine. Sinewy but at the same time fine, almost silky. Finished a touch over-dry? The air improved it, and by the evening it was very smooth and elegant, with the liquorice character intensifying all the time.
Score: 15/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £16.94

2005 Domaine Tempier, 13.5%
Appearance: clear red.
Aroma: dry, liquoricey, touch of herb, sweet cinnamon, fresh, light yet architectural; touch of rabbit fur, the usual gratifying jumble, yet informed by the sense of being in nature’s summer warmth.
Flavour: intense, dry, sinewy, spicy. Very pure-fruited (dried raspberry) with plenty of balancing acidity conveying a sense, typical for ’05, of unusual freshness … but is there something missing? It’s slightly over-tangy and monodimensional. I’d like a bit more textural wealth here.
Score: 14/20
Supplier: The Wine Society (01438 741177) £14.95

Madiran

2002 Ch Montus, 14.5%
Appearance: dark, opaque black.
Aroma: powerful and still reserved: ink, earth, twigs, leaves, tobacco. no overt oak at all despite the fact that this was the only wine in the tasting to have 100% new barrique ageing. Truly different yet inspiring. The fresh smell of the forest: Robin Hood wine.
Flavour: dense, taut, tight, close-textured, with a wonderful wealth of smoky, earthy fruits. Perfect balance between fruit and forest. Tannins well-mastered, to give a deep, sober, serious, cigar-like quality. A meal in itself.
Score: 17/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £12.19

2004 Domaine Berthoumieu, Cuvée Charles de Batz, 14%
Appearance: dark red rather than black.
Aroma: some sweet wood here, over warm, wild, architectural fruits. Lovely forest undergrowth scents, too. Composed and refined. Great balance between red fruits and forest.
Flavour: dense, deep, dark, stewy, earthy and close textured. Madiran fruit never really has a softness or a sumptuousness; it’s always quite spiky and thorny. Tannins are full and grippy but not dry. This is fine food wine, with lots of intrinsic complexity, and a long finish. Best in five years.
Score: 16/20
Supplier: Les Caves de Pyrène (01483 538820) £9.23

2004 Château d’Aydie, 14%
Appearance: deep red-black.
Aroma: sweeter and more internationally pitched, but a wonderful spectrum of fruits nonetheless: plums, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants. Fresh and deep.
Flavour: intense, deep, spicy, earthy, complex and multi-faceted. The flavour is built around a superb fruit core, deep, long and round. There’s a perfect synthesis between the fruit and the tannic mass, which is always the great Madiran challenge. Good for another 7-10 years.
Score: 17/20
Supplier: The Wine Society (01438 741177) £10.95, and also listed by Waitrose at £10.99

The Oxford Verdict

I asked each taster to vote for the best wine of each flight, and then at the end to vote for the appellation of the evening and the wine of the night. Here are the results.

Cahors
Triguedina: 7 votes
Lagrézette: 25 votes
Cèdre: 28 votes (this surprised me)

Bandol
Suffrène: 33 votes
Pibarnon: 16 votes
Tempier: 7 votes

Madiran
Montus: 21 votes
Berthoumieu: 3 votes (a bit unfair but the competition was tough)
Aydie: 36 votes

Appellation of the Evening
Cahors: 10 votes
Bandol: 17 votes
Madiran: 36 votes

Wine of the Evening
No votes: Triguedina
1 vote: Berthoumieu (seems hard)
2 votes: Lagrézette (ditto)
3 votes: Cèdre and Tempier
4 votes: Pibarnon
11 votes: Montus
14 votes: Suffrène
21 votes: Aydie

Thus Madiran, and Château d’Aydie 2004, were declared the evening’s supreme winners. (Gratifying, since my Regional France panel at last year’s Decanter World Wine Awards picked out this wine as being our best, awarding it the Regional France Trophy.)

For value, too, Madiran won out, with an aggregate price of £10.79 compared to £11.25 for the Cahors and £14.02 for the Bandol. AND it’s the healthiest wine on the planet: see The Wine Diet by Professor Roger Corder for more well-argued detail.

One final salient point: only two of tonight’s wines were a ‘grand vin’: in other wines, the top wine of the domain, from which lesser materials were excluded (Châteaux Pibarnon and Aydie). There was one ‘super cuvée’ (the old-vine Charles de Batz from Berthoumieu), but the rest of the selection was the basic ‘classique’ or ‘domain’ wine, with a range of super cuvées also available at higher prices. This is most striking in the case of Tempier, which also has three different single-parcel wines and an old-vine selection in addition to the wine we tasted. Maybe this was why it was relatively disappointing. I’ll be addressing this vexing topic in a future Decanter column.