Château Haut Monplaisir

Cover grass between the rows

Cover grass grows between the vine rows before the fruit reaches the cellar. Mathilde Fournié, winemaker at Château Haut Monplaisir in Lacapelle Cabanac, works with Cathy and Daniel Fournié on a family estate whose discipline begins in the soil and has to remain legible in the bottle. Cathy and Daniel acquired the vineyards from Cathy’s father and began the estate’s present chapter in 1998; Mathilde now carries part of that continuity through the commercial and public-facing work that connects the wines to the market without separating them from the place. The family began its organic conversion in 2009 and reached certification in 2012, after earlier choices that already pointed in that direction, including cover grass and the elimination of herbicides. Their apprenticeship in Cahors Malbec also passed through Pascal and Jean-Marc Verhaeghe of Château du Cèdre, whose counsel helped refine the handling of the grape locally called Cot. Around them, Cécile, Abdel, Cédric, Emilia and Christelle are named as part of the wider team in the vines, which matters at an estate where the method depends on repeated work rather than a single cellar gesture.

Malbec on the third terraces

The estate farms 30 hectares on the third terraces of the Cahors appellation, at about 200 meters, with south-facing vines rooted in clay-siliceous, stony soils. Malbec is the center of the program. For the Tradition cuvée, the wine is 100% Malbec from vines averaging 30 years of age, a useful measure of the house’s patience with fruit, tannin and extraction. After harvest, the grapes are destemmed and crushed, then vinified in cement vats with regular punch downs. Maceration runs 25–30 days, long enough to pull the dark Cahors register from skins and seeds without making the cellar feel like the point of the wine. Ageing lasts 18 months, with 70% in cement vats and 30% in oak barrels. That split says much about the house style: cement for freshness and fruit line, oak for structure, neither asked to dominate. L’Envie sits close to the estate’s signature, a Malbec cuvée associated with blackcurrant, prunes, black olive, rosemary, cinnamon, elderflower and peppermint.

The cellar keeps the room quiet

The tasting room belongs to the château rather than to a staged visitor circuit. The useful texture here is rural and close to the work: the cellar, the vineyard, the tasting room, then back to the rows. The place sits in a verdant pocket of Lacapelle-Cabanac, with the vines facing due south and the family’s hospitality kept at estate scale. There is no need to overstate the room. Cahors gives the wines their dark frame; the Fournié family gives them a quieter hand, through organic farming, cement, modest oak and a portfolio that returns to Malbec again and again. Mathilde’s work matters at that threshold between cellar and audience, where L’Envie and Château Haut Monplaisir Malbec have to read clearly without losing the soil of Monplaisir.