Focus on South of France

David Williams considers some of this year’s main talking points from a part of the world where there always seems to be something worth talking about

Learning to cope with the unexpected

No corner of the wine world has been spared the effects of the climate crisis. But growers in the south of France do seem to have been at the forefront of extreme weather patterns over the past two years.

While much of the coverage of France’s 2021 vintage focused on the disastrous, livelihood-threatening effects of the late spring frost in the north (Burgundy, the Loire, the Jura), nowhere – with the exception of Provence – had a good time of it, and the south certainly did not escape. As one of southern France’s leading large producers, LGI Wines, put it, 2021 was “one of the hardest vintages on record”, with first frost and then extreme heat and drought, followed by heavy rains at harvest time. Volumes were down, although certain parts – Limoux, Roussillon – fared better than others on all counts.

2022 was no less challenging throughout the region, featuring as it did record-breaking high temperatures that consistently broke the 40°C barrier, and led to widespread forest fires. And while most of the vineyards escaped fire damage (and all avoided smoke taint), the extreme heat led to an accelerated growing season and unprecedented early harvests: growers in Fitou began harvesting in late July, and many growers had finished picking by the end of the first week of August.

Expecting the unexpected is now one of the chief skills required of a vigneron working in southern France. Learning how to adapt to the new climatic normal and its confounding range of challenges is calling on all their ingenuity.

Old vines: A regional strength

Old vines have become hot property in the wine world in recent years, with the message that beauty in wine comes with vine age starting to get real traction among consumers. That’s good news for growers across the Occitanie area, which is home to a concentration of France’s most precious old-vine treasures.

Vines of over 50 years of age are commonplace, but a remarkable number of vignerons are working with centenarian vines – survivors, all, of successive waves of economically-driven grubbing-up campaigns – even if they are sometimes prevented from showing off that fact.

Certainly, many Languedoc AOC rules stipulating that wines must be blends containing a minimum percentage of each variety tend to lead to wines in which the fruit of old vines is mingled with the fruit of much younger ones.

That’s not the case in Roussillon, however, a region that has become justly known for intensely concentrated but balanced and finely detailed reds and no-less-fascinating whites made exclusively from old and very old vines.

As ever in this part of France, these can be absurd value, too. Domaine Gayda’s intensely expressive Altre Cami red and white would be at least twice their £26.99 price tag were they to hail from almost anywhere else in France (or Spain; they have a Priorat-like mineral quality), while Jean-Marc Lafage’s Centenaire Vieilles Vignes white, with its waves of salty-pithy acidity, is almost absurdly under-sold at the £11.50 price tag it has at some online retailers.

Pays d’Oc: A 35-year transformation

The Pays d’Oc designation celebrated its 35th birthday last year, and few would argue that the Languedoc-Roussillon-wide IGP, now produced in half of the region’s 240,000ha total vineyard area, has been anything less than transformative since it emerged in 1987.

Its mission – to embrace the varietal marketing and flexible winemaking approach of the new world – remains in place, and the designation has long since established itself as the biggestselling (in terms of volume) French GI both domestically and internationally, with the IGP Pays d’Oc generic body coming up with the fun statistic that a bottle of IGP Pays d’Oc wine is sold every 25 seconds.

That flexibility can be seen in the evolving stylistic and varietal make-up of the GI, which has, over the years, moved from its initial focus on red varieties to adjust to the fashion towards white wine, notably Chardonnay, in the 1990s. Then, in the 2000s, as rosé began to eclipse white wine in France, there was a mini-boom in plantings of the popular pink-wine variety, Cinsault.

Some 58 varieties are now permitted, with the likes of Albariño, Nielluccio and Tempranillo taking their place alongside the big hitters Merlot (the biggest red in terms of volume produced) and Chardonnay (comfortably the biggest white). In terms of style, the balance is now 45% red, 30% rosé and 25% white.

Picpoul de Pinet: Getting serious

For all that IGP Pays d’Oc remains the standard-bearer for southern French varietal wine, the single most successful white variety from the region in the past decade has been the one that most consumers would be hard pressed to recognise as a variety at all. That variety is Picpoul, of “de Pinet” fame, which is responsible for half of the Languedoc’s white wine production, and a remarkable 80% of Languedoc-Roussillon’s total white wine exports.

It’s a phenomenon largely shaped by British drinkers, with the UK responsible for more than 57% of Picpoul exports (65% of Picpoul is exported). There’s something about this “Muscadet of the south”, with its combination of freshness, easy lemon-and-apple fruitiness and, perhaps crucially, pricing that is particularly suited to UK palates.

It’s all a far cry from the late 1980s, when vignerons in the region were puzzling how to cope with the precipitous fall in the market for vermouth which had sustained them for so long.

The next step is to cement the appellation as capable of something a little more serious, which it is hoping to do via officially sanctioned “Selection” wines, which aim for something with a little more concentration, elegance and/or complexity.

Château criteria.

Occitanie v Burgundy

At a time when winemakers in Essex are ripening Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with ease, lovers of traditional Champagne and Burgundy could be forgiven for looking north rather than south for a fix of the sort of virtues they associate with these varieties.

Curiously, however, recent hot vintages in the south of France have not impeded the rise in quality of both varieties in and around Limoux Upper Aude Valley, an area that has long provided them with the cooler comforts they prefer – and, as ever in these parts, at significantly lower prices than their northern peers (including in Essex).

Recent Aude Valley favourites at The Wine Merchant include Domaine d’O and Domaine de Mouscaillo (Pinot Noir); Domaine J Laurens and Étienne Fort (sparkling Limoux) and Domaine Bégude (Chardonnay) – while the inexhaustible Jean-Claude Mas makes some of the best and best-value wines in his wide portfolio in the area.

A developing sub-regional identity?

Winegrowers in Limoux/the Aude Valley are not the only ones who are having some success in carving out a distinctive identity within the overarching southern French/Languedoc-Roussillon/ Occitanie brands.

CRÉATEURS DE GRANDS VINS en Languedoc-Roussillon

Founded in 1995, Calmel & Joseph is a micro-négociant. We make Languedoc-Roussillon wines from carefully selected vineyards which are farmed with utmost respect for the environment, according to strict guidelines. We vinify, age and blend to create wines of character.

La Marquise is another one of our fine exclusive estate wines that highlights yet another classic indigenous variety that grows, like all our other estate wines, on organically farmed vineyards at 350 meters altitude.

www.calmel-joseph.com

PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

There is a sense, too, certainly among more engaged wine lovers, that the region’s appellations and crus are starting to come into their own, each of them with a different take on the traditional Mediterranean red blend.

We are not quite at Rhône – let alone Bordeaux or Burgundy – levels of sub-regional recognition just yet. But bottlings from Corbières, Pic St-Loup, Faugères, Terrasses du Larzac, St-Chinian, Maury, Fitou and Minervois-La-Livinière have all been spotted by this correspondent in one or more supermarkets in recent months, and at prices often significantly higher than the multiples’ standard southern French limit.

Northern Lights Tasting

Delibo, Dreyfus Ashby, Gonzalez Byass, Hatch Mansfield, Marta Vine, New Generation Wines, Richmond Wine Agencies, Ucopia and Winetraders return for this indie-focused tasting.

Each importer has its own specialisms and will be using the event to unveil new ranges and new vintages, in several cases in the company of the winemakers themselves.

For more information and to register, email julia@richmondwineagencies.com.

Monday, April 24

The Tetley

Hunslet Road

Leeds LS10 1JQ

Walker & Wodehouse Spring Tasting

The event will showcase wines from across the W&W portfolio along with “a few surprises”.

For registration details, merchants should contact their account manager.

Wednesday, May 3

Tanner & Co

50 Bermondsey Street

London SE1 3UD

Deep Down Under Tasting

This is the third edition of the Deep Down Under tasting, organised by a group of leading importers.

They are Awin Barratt Siegel, Graft

Wine Company, Liberty Wines, Flint Wines, Indigo Wine and Nekter Wines.

Several Australian winemakers will be visiting for the first time including Vinteloper founder David Bowley, Tim Wildman, Melanie Chester of Giant Steps, Tom Grant of SC Pannell and Johann Henschke.

Registration information is available at Eventbrite.co.uk.

Monday, May 22

Wild By Tart

3-4 Ecceleston Yards

London SW1W 9AZ

Wines of Canada

Tasting

Twenty-four wineries from British Columba, Nova Scotia and Ontario will be represented at this event.

The day includes a Cool Reds masterclass and a Chardonnay feature table.

The tasting will feature wines from both vinifera and hybrid grapes.

Full details and registration can be found at canadatasting.co.uk or from daniel. brewer@westburycom.co.uk.

Tuesday, May 23 & Wednesday, May 24

Canadian Embassy

Canada House, Trafalgar Square

London SW1Y 5BJ

Wines of Georgia Tasting

Sarah Abbott MW introduces her musttry selection from over 100 Georgian wines.

The event will feature the collaboration with Georgia’s Women in Wine organisation with many female winemakers visiting.

Those seeking wines not yet represented can visit the Unsigned Talent table.

For more information and to register, email madeleine@swirlgroup.com.

Tuesday, May 23

The Vinyl Factory

18 Marshall Street

London W1F 7BE

Thorman Hunt Italian Tasting

This tasting features many family growers and is dedicated to premium, artisanal wines from across Italy.

Highlights include Argiano, Fratelli Berlucchi, Cortonesi, Azienda Agricola Michele Reverdito, Di Giuseppe and Mauro Pavia.

Thorman Hunt is also introducing some new arrivals including Fattoria La Rivolta from Campania, and Casa D’Ambra in Ischia.

For more information and to register, email vanessa@thormanhunt.co.uk.

Wednesday, May 24

67 Pall Mall

London SW1Y 5ES

Annoying/endearing Aidan was in today. He was celebrating his 30th birthday by being a grumpy wee prick.

It’s a period of High Cosmic Activity, it’s everyone’s birthday, which doesn’t make sense. Are we just drawn to people born at a particular time? Is there a particular time that people are born in? Aidan was bemoaning his 30-year-oldness and I couldn’t give a fuck. Turning 30? Walk in the park. Why would you want to hang on to those miserable, vomity, wise/foolish, secure/insecure years of your 20s? What do those years even matter, now? “The only thing you have to lose is the comfort of your working body,” I told annoying/ endearing Aidan. “Things are only going to get worse. Enjoy those fleeting moments of fulfilment/pleasure because you certainly don’t get more of those in your 30s. And don’t fake the fulfilment/pleasure by excessive booze and food consumption.”

I have been eating a lot of food and occasionally feeling really quite sick with delicious excess. Last week I had a day out in Edinburgh, culminating in a dimly lit room with some well-dressed wine people, many cuts of cow and some killercarbs covered in strong tasting fats.

“Do you remember,” I said to my favourite sub-continentally inspired Fellow Merchant, “when we were in Sicily and you asked me if I had to only have one herb for the rest of my life what would it be and I said mint? I would like to change my answer, mint was foolish …” We never got to finish this conversation because we never do, we’re trapped in an everlasting almost. We would like to be taken away somewhere (#indiaandphoebetakeaway) and given interesting things to taste so that we could get to the bottom of things. Greece would be nice. Or Tenerife. We would be an absolute pleasure.