Cahors: We Really Needed to Keep Driving
Region: Cahors, Southwest France
Climate: Mainly continental with Atlantic and Mediterranean influences.
Grape Variety: Malbec, locally traditionally known as Côt or Auxerrois, with smaller amounts of permitted supporting varieties. We really needed to keep driving.
We had spent the beginning of our road trip slowly making our way through Burgundy, stopping for wine far more often than was reasonable. Now we had family waiting for us in San Sebastián and still had quite a few kilometres to cover.
And then we realised we were driving through Cahors.Malbec country. Obviously, we had to stop.
We weren't particularly confident anyone would answer.
Instead, we walked into harvest.
There was a group of young winemakers and friends sitting around a table covered in food. Someone was eating a bowl of spaghetti. Music was playing, records were everywhere, and someone was pouring wine from an absurdly enormous glass that seemed to exist mainly because everyone found it funny.
Within minutes, somebody had given us food.
Then they gave us wine.
Then another wine.
And another.
We had stumbled into Le Vent des Jours, a small natural wine producer in Cahors. The people around the table weren't just the winemakers. Friends had come to help with the harvest, including people who worked in restaurants in Paris. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and somehow nobody appeared particularly concerned that two complete strangers had just knocked on the door.
Eventually we wandered out back to see where the wine was being made.
There were barrels, stainless-steel tanks, concrete vessels and ceramic amphorae in different shapes and sizes. Wines were fermenting everywhere. We tasted reds that smelled almost ridiculously of strawberries, others with a slight fizz, and Malbecs quite unlike the big, dark versions we'd come to expect from the grape.
It was completely unceremonious.
Eventually we remembered that we'd actually come to buy wine. We chose a few bottles. They looked at the half-empty box and decided that wasn't acceptable, so they filled the rest and gave them to us.
Six bottles it was.
We had stopped because it felt wrong to drive through the birthplace of Malbec without tasting any.
Instead, we got spaghetti, an enormous wine glass, six bottles and a tiny glimpse into what harvest actually looks like when you remove all the romantic imagery around it.
Mostly, it looks like a lot of work.
But sometimes it also looks like a bunch of friends around a table, opening another bottle for two strangers who really should have kept driving.