The Terroirs
The Cahors vineyard is equidistant (200 km) from the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. In this sheltered position, out of reach of the damp Atlantic air and the autumn rains of the Mediterranean, the late autumn is usually sunny, allowing the grapes to ripen in dry conditions.
The vineyard, shaped by the magnificent, snaking form of the Lot river, is divided up into smallish parcels of land, shunning the silty valley floor in favour of the terraces and gently sloping hillsides higher up. Here the soil is poor in nutrients, stony and alluvial (with a lattice of red clay and sand), of the type vines love.
Recreated with the utmost care, the vines are also being reintroduced to the Causse limestone plateau, abandoned by wine-growers after the phylloxera crisis. A few pioneers, considered mad at first, decided to tackle the stony plateau, or caillasse as some local wine-growers call it. Vines are springing up here and there, alongside the oak woods with their buried treasure of truffles, breaking the monotony of this uncultivated land. The warm, shallow soil provides the best conditions for the grapes to ripen.