Chateau Combel-La-Serre Le Pur Fruit du Causse - Cahors 2022

100% malbec (aka auxerrois locally).  The fruit for the entry-level Pur comes from seven different Combel sites totaling 8.5 hectares around their home village of Cournou, which lies on the Causse Calcaire, a limestone plateau in Cahors at 320-350 meters in elevation. Planted on clay-limestone soils, the vines are certified-organic (in conversion to biodynamic farming), average 30 years old and are kept to a modest 40 hl/ha yield.

The bunches are hand-harvested and mainly destemmed but with up to 20% directly pressed as whole clusters; the juice ferments at cool temperatures with indigenous yeasts in cement and steel tanks with around two week of maceration. The wine is aged on its lees in cement through the winter and bottled unfiltered in the spring. Sulfur throughout vinification and aging is minimal.

From importer David Bowler: Julien Ilbert is a young, charismatic vigneron with a fresh perspective on his native Cahors. Vines have been in the Ilbert family for generations, though grapes had always been sold to the local cave cooperative. Julien began producing his own wines around 2005.

The wines have also evolved in the decade since Julien launched his own estate, culminating in what we now get to enjoy in our glasses. Though you should never judge a book by its cover, Julien has made the decision to design playful labels and bottle the wines in Burgundian bottles, two seemingly superficial details that are actually a very bold statement in the ultra-traditional mindset of most Cahors producers.