Kagor - best €3 wine in the store
On recent travels in Eastern Europe a quick visit to Tesco reveals a completely new world of wine from the likes of Georgia, Moldova and all sorts of other places in the extreme east of Europe that are not exactly noted for their wine. Although they should be noted for their price! As the joys of a post communist world.
So I picked up a bunch of different, and completely unknown (at least to me) wines, the most expensive being around €5.00, and loaded them into the car for the long drive back across Germany from eastern Poland. Forget the French hypermarkets. So I’m just starting to try some of them. Here’s the first:
“Кагор” (in Russian) “Kagor” (in Latin script)
No idea, but it says it’s 16% on the bottle, off course this is the only part of the label I can read. It’s red from Moldova, near the Black sea on the border with Romania. Turns out it’s sweet and essentially like a very smooth Port. I can only imagine that it’s some kind of fortified wine. Absolutely delicious and tastes a lot like “more” – the typical effect that desert wine has on me. So time to do a little research on it.
Turns out that Kagor is a Russian corruption of the name of the French town (and appellation) of Cahors, north of Toulouse. Seems that a pope decided it was good enough to be sacramental wine around 1000 years ago and it’s been pretty popular ever since. Kings, Popes and Emperors have been into the stuff for centuries. It was on the tables at the wedding of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitane, Peter the Great imported the stuff into Russia and liked it so much that they planted some of the Malbec vines in Moldova a couple of centuries ago to copy it. Which is where the Moldovan version comes from today.
No doubt there will be elitists that will scoff, but it’s totally up to western quality standards, and if you can somehow get your hands on it – especially for about €3.00 a pop – you can’t go wrong! And your car will being having issues with the back springs just like mine.
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