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Wine region · France

South West France

A patchwork of appellations inland from Bordeaux, home to Malbec’s original heartland in Cahors and to Tannat in Madiran.

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About South West France

Cahors is where Malbec — locally called Côt or Auxerrois — has been grown for centuries. The style is darker, firmer and more austere than Argentine Malbec, with more obvious tannin and earthier fruit.

Madiran is built on Tannat, a variety with among the highest tannin levels of any wine grape. Micro-oxygenation, now used worldwide, was developed here specifically to soften it.

Jurançon makes distinctive whites from Petit Manseng and Gros Manseng, both dry and sweet, with piercing acidity and exotic fruit character.

South West France is a wine region, not an appellation

No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A country’s major wine division, usually containing appellations or sub-regions beneath it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.

Grapes

Wines from here

red

Cahors

Malbec in its French homeland: darker, firmer and more savoury than the Argentine version.

red

Madiran

Tannat from south-west France: among the most tannic red wines made anywhere, and the birthplace of micro-oxygenation.

Climate

Varied — Atlantic in the west, warmer and more continental inland towards Cahors and Gaillac.

These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.

Soil and geology

As varied as the climate: limestone plateaux above the Lot at Cahors, clay and gravel around Madiran, sand and boulbènes further west.

WineHQ describes soil in terms of what it demonstrably does — drainage, heat retention, water supply, rooting depth — and not in terms of flavours it is said to transmit. Vines take up ions, not aromas, and no mechanism has been demonstrated by which a mineral in the ground is tasted in the glass. See soil and drainage.

Places within it

  • Bergerac — Bordeaux’s neighbour upriver, growing the same grapes under a different name and at a much lower price.
  • Cahors — Malbec’s original home, on the river Lot, and the source of the "black wine" that made the variety’s reputation long before Argentina existed as a wine country.
  • Gaillac — One of the oldest vineyards in France, on the Tarn, growing a set of local varieties found almost nowhere else.
  • Jurançon — Sweet and dry whites from Petit and Gros Manseng in the Pyrenean foothills, made from grapes left on the vine into December.
  • Madiran — Tannat in its homeland — a variety so tannic that a winemaking technique had to be invented to tame it.
  • Marcillac — A tiny upland appellation in the Aveyron making sharp, peppery red from Fer Servadou on red iron-rich soil.

What to eat, and how to serve it

Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.

Cahors

Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).

Try with steak with chimichurri, duck confit or roast chicken.

Madiran

Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).

Try with duck confit, ribeye steak or roast chicken.

Sources

Sources consulted