Comments on: 100 Wines: A Chronicle, #24

By: Thomas Pellechia

Thomas Pellechia — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:17:34 +0000

Those kinds of labels remind me of passport stamps, with their off-kilter look.

The one thing I learned while visiting Cahors, a drive from Bordeaux, but a nice drive, you can–no, you must–drink the red wine with whatever is on your plate.

Good idea to get up to, and then down into, the prehistoric Pech Merle the next time there.

By: The Wine Mule

The Wine Mule — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:32:06 +0000

Aw, it’s not that hard to get to Cahors now. You just zip up the A20 and get off at the D 911/Cahors South.

I envy you the experience of drinking a Cahors from the good old days! Lately, I see less 100% malbec, and more with 20% merlot to soften the wines up for earlier consumption.

I’m impressed the wine came off as well as it did after only four years. But also not surprised that the experience was so clearly memorable.

By: Benito

Benito — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:57:48 +0000

This would have been printed at an odd time–the shells were likely made sometime in the 70s, and the winery would have had several years’ worth of label sheets printed with the date overstamped as needed per bottling. (That’s why so many older French labels have the year in red, or sometimes the year looks a little offset to the rest of the text.)

Proper identification is beyond my skills, because at the time this could have been laid out on anything from metal type to a primitive computer. The Domaine line is in something like Bernhard Modern Condensed, “Cahors” is definitely in the Trajan family (going back to the 2nd century Roman empire), and I don’t have quite enough info to identify the script font. But I mocked up a quick forgery using the major design elements I mentioned here–I didn’t bother recreating the small Roman text, but could do so if I had to.

http://i34.tinypic.com/akepeh.jpg