Chants du Closeau Malbec: The French Wine That Almost Disappeared From Its Own Country

A guest told me something once that I have not stopped thinking about since.

They said that finding a Malbec that is actually French is uncommon, and that if you do find one, it has a story behind it worth asking about. I did not know at the time how right they were. Most people who order a Malbec anywhere in the world are drinking something from Argentina, and most people, understandably, assume that is simply where the grape comes from. It is not. Malbec is French. It was nearly wiped off the map in its own country, and the version most of the world now drinks exists largely because it left.

The Chants du Closeau on our list is one of the rare ones that stayed.

Where Malbec actually comes from

Malbec is native to southwest France, with Cahors in the Lot Valley as its historic heartland, grown on limestone and clay slopes along the river since Roman times. By the Middle Ages, Cahors was already known for a dense, almost black wine that the British called black wine, prized for its depth and shipped through Bordeaux to markets across northern Europe. Peter the Great reportedly drank it to help heal a stomach ailment, and the Russian Orthodox Church adopted it for use in mass. This was not a minor regional curiosity. For several centuries, Cahors Malbec was one of the most sought-after wines in Europe.

Then, in the 1870s, phylloxera arrived. The root louse that devastated vineyards across Europe attacked Cahors with particular severity, and the roughly 40,000 hectares under vine at the time disappeared almost entirely within a few years. Malbec never fully recovered its position in France. Growers who replanted often chose grapes that were hardier and better suited to the region's difficult, unpredictable weather. A catastrophic frost in 1956 finished off much of what phylloxera had left standing. By the mid-twentieth century, Malbec in its own birthplace was a fraction of what it had once been.

What saved the grape, ironically, was leaving.

How Argentina took the grape and made it the world's version of Malbec

In 1853, the French agronomist Michel Aimé Pouget was invited to Argentina to help establish a viticultural centre in Mendoza, and he brought Malbec cuttings with him. The grape found something in the high-altitude vineyards at the foot of the Andes that it had never quite found in France: consistent sun, minimal disease pressure, and the wide swing between hot days and cold nights that builds acidity and structure into a wine without sacrificing ripeness. While phylloxera was destroying vineyards across Europe, Malbec in Mendoza was thriving, largely untouched.

By the early twentieth century, Mendoza was already known locally as the home of what people called the French grape. Political and economic upheaval in Argentina slowed things down for a period, but from the late twentieth century onward, with the return of stable markets and a new generation of ambitious winemakers, Argentine Malbec became one of the most successful wine stories of the modern era. Today it is the country's flagship grape, and for most people who drink Malbec anywhere in the world, Argentina is simply what the word means.

Meanwhile, back in Cahors, the grape held on in smaller numbers. In 1971, Cahors wine made from at least 70% Malbec was granted AOC status, formal legal protection of the name and the region, which gave French Malbec producers a foundation to rebuild from. A newer generation of winemakers has spent the decades since bringing genuine ambition back to the appellation. But the scale never returned to what it once was. French Malbec today remains the minority version of a grape the rest of the world has decided belongs to South America.

This is the reason the guest's comment stayed with me. Ordering a French Malbec is, in a small way, ordering the original rather than the version that became famous. The two taste genuinely different, and understanding why requires understanding the climates that shaped each one.

Why French Malbec tastes lighter

Argentine Malbec, grown at high altitude in a hot, dry, sun-drenched climate, tends toward richness: ripe blackberry and plum, soft tannins, often notes of chocolate, violet, and a smoky sweetness on the finish. It is a big, generous style of wine, built for warmth and immediate pleasure.

French Malbec, grown in the cooler, wetter, more marginal conditions of southwest France, produces something with more restraint. Thinner skins at lower altitudes mean less of the dense tannic structure that defines the Argentine style, and the cooler climate keeps the fruit from ripening into the same jammy richness. The result is a wine with real character and length, but without the weight that most people associate with the grape.

This is exactly what makes the Chants du Closeau distinctive on our list, and exactly why I reach for it more often than most people expect from a red wine.

The wine people actually want in summer

One of the most common requests I get, particularly once the weather turns warm, is for a light red wine. People want the structure and the company of a red, without the density that makes a big Shiraz or a heavy Malbec feel wrong for a warm evening.

The instinct is usually to point them toward a house red, and our house red does genuinely satisfy that request. But I almost always steer people toward the Chants du Closeau instead, because it does something the house red cannot quite manage: it is genuinely light on the palate while still carrying real complexity underneath that lightness. It has richness and length, enough structure to feel serious, without ever tipping into heaviness. It is the wine I would choose for someone who wants a proper glass of red without the commitment a bigger wine demands on a warm evening.

Where it sits on the current menu

The Chants du Closeau is currently paired the fava which is one of the pairings I find most interesting on the entire list.

Fava is dense and earthy, a slow-cooked split pea purée that carries real weight for something built on such humble ingredients. The instinct might be to pair something equally quiet alongside it, but the Malbec goes the other way, meeting that density with a full-bodied red rather than tiptoeing around it. The lighter structure of the French style means it does not overwhelm the dish the way a heavier, more tannic red would, but it has enough presence to genuinely stand alongside something as substantial as the fava rather than disappearing next to it. It is one of the pairings on our current menu that surprises guests most, precisely because a light French red and a dense Greek pulse dip should not, on paper, belong together.

We wrote about that pairing logic in more detail in the article on why every dish at Nectar has to be able to pair with something. The fava and the Malbec is exactly the kind of combination that piece was written about: unlikely on paper, genuinely correct in the glass.

The Chants du Closeau also appears alongside the rest of the red wine list, where it sits between the fuller-bodied Wide River Shiraz and Montepulciano on one side and the delicate Benières Pinot Noir on the other, occupying the middle ground: lighter than the big reds, more structured than the Pinot Noir, and genuinely its own thing.

Ask for it by name

If you come to Nectar in summer and want a red that will not feel wrong in warm weather, ask for the Malbec specifically. Not because our house red is not a perfectly good default, but because the Chants du Closeau does something more interesting: French restraint applied to a grape the rest of the world has decided belongs somewhere else entirely.

It is a small reminder, in a glass, that where something ends up famous is not always where it began.

Book a table at Nectar Bar and ask for the Malbec. Tell us you want something light. We will know exactly what you mean.

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