Cahors is not only one of the most historically important wine appellations in all of France, it is the spiritual home of the Malbec grape. Situated along the Lot River in the southwest, a few hours inland from Bordeaux, Cahors had the market for powerful Malbec reds essentially cornered, only to have its thunder stolen by the dense, polished wines of Mendoza, Argentina.

Even before Mendoza Malbec came along, though, the “black wines of Cahors” had fallen out of fashion, but a growing legion of forward-thinking properties are trying to change that. Les Roques de Cana is one such estate, and what’s especially noteworthy about today’s 2008 “Le Vin de Noces” (besides the fact that it’s a 2008) is that it wasn’t “internationalized” in the hopes of finding a new audience. Rather than shoot for a sweeter, more extracted style aged in toasty new oak, they instead used no oak at all, aging the wine in concrete vats to showcase its soil-driven, black fruited character as transparently as possible. Aging in cement also helped tame Malbec’s notorious tannins—which can be further heightened by tannins from new oak—and with a decade of bottle age now under its belt, Le Vin de Noces is like a mature red Bordeaux crossed with a Bandol Rouge: powerful, refined, and a little wild. If there are more well-aged gems like this lurking around Cahors, trust me, I will find them—this one is not to be missed!