Clairette – a surprising white grape from the Languedoc

Whilst in the Languedoc recently I was able to go on lots of study trips of the wine areas and also to attend quite a few masterclasses – in fact I have been thrilled this year to learn that the French, Croat and Slovene words for masterclass are, well, masterclass!

The beautiful Domaine La Croix Chaptal – photo courtesy of the winery.

One of the best of these masterclasses was about a little known white wine called Clairette du Languedoc. The appellation / PDO was created in 1948, making it the oldest white wine PDO in the Languedoc. Only one grape is permitted, the Clairette or Clairette Blanche, which is really only found in the Rhône, Provence and Languedoc regions. It is a low acid, but high alcohol grape, so can make pretty flabby wines if you are not careful with it. It is widely grown in the Southern Rhône, where it is used as a blending grape, including in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The grape lends its name to the sweet sparkling Clairette de Die, despite only 25% of Clairette being allowed in the finished wine, the rest must be Muscat – originally it was 100% Clairette.

In the Languedoc two areas specialise in the grape Clairette de Bellegarde, in the far east of the region near the Rhône, and Clairette du Languedoc, just west of Montpellier. So troublesome was the grape that in the past it was often used as the basis of vermouth rather than being drunk on its own, and further back in history it was a sweet wine – the dry versions were apparently called Picardon and the sweet ones Clairette. Luckily though, as is so often the case, modern know-how has come to its rescue and in the Clairette du Languedoc zone a modest renaissance is underway. The sea is only 20 km away and sighting the vineyards to catch the sea breezes and the refreshing Tramontane wind is very important to retain freshness.

Map of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, click for a larger view.

The appellation is the smallest in the Languedoc with just 100 hectares of vineyard and 18 producers, 7 of which are cooperatives, but it produces four styles of wine all from the single grape. Fresh, dry whites are made, as well as sweet versions, long wood aged rancio wines and fortified Vins Doux Naturels. I tasted examples of all of these and truthfully found the sweet versions to be a bit light and lacking, which is a shame as there is more sweet wine made here than dry. The drier styles quite excited me though and I brought one back to show in a tasting and it excited everyone there too.

The beautiful Domaine La Croix Chaptal – photo courtesy of the winery.

2014 Domaine La Croix Chaptal Clairette Blanche 
Domaine La Croix Chaptal
AC / AOP Clairette du Languedoc
Languedoc
France

This delightful estate is owned by Charles-Walter Pacaud who hails from the Cognac region, but fell in love with Languedoc’s Terrasses du Larzac while studying winemaking in Montpellier. He managed to buy this estate which has a recorded history going back to the 10th century, but Gallo-Roman archeological finds in the vineyards suggest the land has been in use for a lot longer than that. Most of what he produces is either Coteaux du Languedoc, Languedoc or Languedoc Terrasses du Larzac, with just one hectare being Clairette, but they are old vines that give better concentration and they grow on well drained stony and gravelly soil.

Charles-Walter Pacaud tending his vines – photo courtesy of the winery.

The grapes are harvested by hand, as required in the appellation, destined and spend a little time macerating on the skins for flavour and texture development. 30% is aged in new oak on the lees, with the rest aged in stainless steel tank on the lees for 18 months.

The aromas are quite beguiling, very mineral, herbal – especially fennel and vanilla – together with honey, almonds, peach skin and light toast. The palate is more fleshy with some burnt orange and a mouth-filling texture. there is even a very attractive touch of Fino sherry about it, just a point of oxidation that makes it quite delicious. The finish is very long and mineral and the more you come back to this wine the better it gets. A wonderful discovery, try it if you can – 91/100 points.

This would be wonderful with rich fish dishes, shellfish with garlic butter, fish pie, Coquilles Saint Jacques, chicken and all manner of cheeses too.

Sadly this excellent wine is not available in the UK, so contact the winery direct. I cannot find any other examples of the region available here either, so make sure you try it when you are over there.
For US stockists, click here.

Wine of the Week – a Proustian moment in the Languedoc

Vines on a hillside in Minervois-La Livinière.

Recently I enjoyed a spectacular visit to the Languedoc region in France’s deep south and it was a great, immersive trip with many new and exciting experiences. I was able to try all sorts of fascinating wine styles that I will be sharing with over the coming weeks and months, but one wine in particular made me very happy.

For me it was a Proustian moment, or Prussian as my predictive text would like it to be, because I used to sell the wine that I was tasting. It was my best selling wine and I used to really love it and the memories came flooding back. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Map of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, click for a larger view.

2011 Domaine la Borie Blanche Terroirs d’Altitude
Domaine la Borie Blanche
Maison et Vignobles Lorgeril
AC / AOP Minervois-la Livivinière
Languedoc
France

Nicolas and Miren de Lorgeril own the amazing Château de Pennautier in Cabardès, in the Montagne Noire just to the north of Carcassonne. The spectacular Château dominates the village of Pennautier and has belonged to the Lorgeril family since 1620. I will write more about that estate another day, but in 1999 the Lorgerils bought another property in the neighbouring appellation of Minervois. This was perfect timing as the new ‘Cru’ appellation of Minervois-la Livivinière had just been created. This is a district within Minervois and is a counted as a Cru and considered to be a finer sub-district of Minervois. Indeed it was the first Cru in the Languedoc, or as they cheekily say ‘Le Premier Cru du Languedoc’.

This Cru appellation, or finer appellation, is only for red wines – Minervois itself can also be white – and covers the village of La Livinière, as well as five others nearby, Cesseras, Siran, Felines-Minervois, Azille and Azillanet. The rules are stricter than for ordinary Minervois, with lower yields, 45 hectoliters per hectare as compared to the 50 allowed for standard Minervois. The wines have to be aged for eight months longer than more basic Minervois and then every November, one year after harvest, there are tasting panels to select the wines that are allowed the coveted Minervois-la Livivinière appellation. There is a very high failure rate, with around 40% failing to make the grade. The upshot is that most producers here actually carry on making the more traditional Minervois with only a handful making the more ambitious and finer Minervois-la Livivinière wines. 

I tasted a good number of Minervois-la Livivinière wines and it seems to me that as a bunch they have more intensity than the straight Minervois, more focus and precision and have less jammy fruit, in fact they are less about the fruit. In short they have more finesse, more minerality and more complexity.

Looking south over the rugged terrain of Minervois-la Livivinière.

Little pockets of vines colonise parts of the hillsides.

The landscape here is remarkable, with the vineyards planted on the Petit Causse foothills of the south-facing Montagne Noire on the northern fringes of Minervois. It is a wild and ruggedly beautiful place with altitudes of around 120 to 400 metres above sea level. As you look around the place you find little pockets of vines growing wherever they can be accessed and worked, rather than a landscape covered in viticulture. The soils are limestone and schist in the main with those wild garrigues herbs growing where nothing else will. A borie, as in Domaine la Borie Blanche, is a stone shelter and you can find these all over the region and in Provence. 

The fermentation vats at Domaine la Borie Blanche – photo courtesy of the winery.

The wine is a blend of 50% Syrah grown on schist – which gives the mineral backbone, 10% Grenache, 20% Mourvèdre and another 20% Syrah which is fermented by carbonic maceration, which tames the bitterness and harshness that wines grown on schist can sometimes have. The fermentation is in big oak vats with regular pump overs and half the wine is then aged in barrel with half being aged in wooden vats.

The wine is a deep garnet colour with a nose of rich dried fruit, wild herbs, liquorice, truffle, pepper and ripe cherries. On the palate it is mouth filling, delicately smoky from the oak, with a dash of espresso and cocoa, with velvety tannins, fragrant herbs, rich black fruit and dried fruit too,  all making it wonderfully savoury and long. This is a seriously good and great value bottle of wine – 91/100 points.

This would be superb with almost any rich meaty fare, especially roast lamb I would think.

Available in the UK at around £11 per bottle from Majestic and Le Bon Vin.
For US stockists, click here.

If you cannot find this wine, then other superb Minervois-la Livivinière can be found if you shop around, for instance Waitrose stock an excellent one from Château Maris.

 

 

Wine of the Week – fine fizz at a great price from France’s Languedoc region

Carcassonne, which was recently my home for a week.

The garden of my hotel in Carcassonne – I have to pinch myself now I am back in blighty.

I have recently spent a week in Carcassonne experiencing as many of the different wines of France’s Languedoc region as I could. It was part of Languedoc Week (‪#‎languedocweek‬) and I had a wonderful time and learnt a lot, tasting loads of wines, attending seminars and visiting vineyards with fellow wine writers from all over the world.

Languedoc is a fascinating place, full of wonderful scenery and many exciting wines. Most wine consumers will have experienced the basic wines from the region, the Vin de Pays d’Oc – the new term is Indication Géographique Protégée / IGP d’Oc and that sometimes appears on the label instead. These are often sold as a varietal bottling, with the grape variety from which the wine is made appearing on the label.

Languedoc is home to a whole clutch of finer, more ambitious and increasingly famous wines as well though.  These often have their own Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC / AC), with the place name being the most important piece of information on the label. The new term for AOC is Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP) and that sometimes appears on the label instead.

Map of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, Limoux is on the left in yellow – click for a larger view.

It is a hot region with a Mediterranean climate, so it perhaps logical that red wines from the likes of AC / AOP Languedoc, Fitou, Corbières, Minervois, and Saint-Chinian are the region’s most famous products, but the Languedoc makes plenty of good whites – Picpoul de Pinet is especially popular right now – and rosés too. There are also some magnificent and under appreciated sweet wines and some excellent sparklings too.

After a hard day’s wine tasting, some nice fizz is always a refreshing idea and I was fortunate enough to taste quite a few of the sparklers from the region. I enjoyed one of them so much so that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Le Moulin Brut
Domaine J. Laurens
AC / AOP Blanquette de Limoux
Limoux
Aude
Languedoc
France

Blanquette de Limoux is a lovely wine style that I first used to sell a long time ago, but sadly it remains a sort of secret wine beloved by a few, but not really widely available, at least not in the UK.

It is thought to be the oldest quality sparkling wine in the world, with records showing that it was produced in 1531 by the Benedictine monks of Saint Hilaire Abbey, some 10 km south of Carcassonne. This predates Champagne and I am sure that, like Champagne, the process was hit and miss in the early days and was not really perfected until the middle of the nineteenth century. What is definitely true is that the wines have got better and better in recent years and now deserve to be much more sought after.

The climate here is a bit odd as winds from the Atlantic manage to reach over and temper the Mediterranean heat. This allows for the production of whites and sparkling, especially if they harvest them early and there is even some good Pinot Noir grown around here.

Blanquette de Limoux wines must be made sparkling by the traditional method, the same process as used in Champagne. The wine must be made of at least 90% Mauzac grapes, known locally as Blanquette (small white in Occitan, the local traditional language – the langue d’Oc), with Chardonnay and / or Chenin Blanc making up the rest.

A light, sweet sparkling wine called Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale is also made, as is another traditional method wine called Crémant de Limoux, which can contain much more Chardonnay in its blend, and I will write about those another day.

Harvest at Domaine J. Laurens – photo courtesy of the estate.

Domaine J. Laurens was bought and totally renovated in 2002 by local businessman Jacques Calvel and although still wines can be made here, this estate only produces sparkling. In my opinion they achieve very high quality by close attention to detail and by longer ageing on the lees than is required. The minimum time for yeast autolysis, ageing on the lees in the bottle, in Limoux is 9 months, but Laurens age their wines for between 12 and 24 months, which gives more complexity and finesse. The blend is 90% Mauzac with 10% Chardonnay.

Limoux vineyards, April 2016.

The wine is a pale colour with a fine and persistent mousse, while the nose is fresh, lively and floral, together with ripe apple and pear notes. On the palate the freshness dominates, making it taut and focussed, while there is plenty of green apple and a hint of nuts from the lees ageing together with a little richness of honey and cream. A lovely and lively wine that makes a great aperitif and I am sure it would go with lots of delicate dishes as well. It’s dry, but not searingly so, as there is an underlying softness to the fruit. A distinguished wine and great value too, I cannot think of a better sparkling wine at this price – 89/100 points.

Available in the UK at around £13 per bottle from Stone, Vine & Sun, click here for other stockists or check with Boutinot, their UK distributor.
For US stockists, click here.

If this wine is not easily available for you, then you will almost certainly find a Blanquette de Limoux made by the excellent Sieur D’Arques cooperative near you somewhere – look at the small print on the label. In the UK, Tesco’s Finest 1531 Blanquette de Limoux is made by them and is very good and a bargain at £8.50 per bottle, click here for case sales.

New Wine of the Week – a delicious and very drinkable southern French white

When thinking of wines from France’s deep south – I am talking Languedoc-Roussillion here – most people automatically think of the reds. Picpoul de Pinet  is really the only white wine from the region that has managed to carve out a niche for itself.

Which is understandable as the reds are often very fine indeed and frequently underrated. However, many of the whites from these regions are really excellent and deserve to be more widely known. I tasted a wine recently which is a case in point. It is a white wine from Corbières, which is a PDO / AOC in the Aude department, which in turn forms part of the Languedoc-Roussillon wine region. It’s a big and important part too, producing just under half of all the PDO wine of the region.

I have always liked Corbières wines as they frequently offer great value and often very high quality too – see my article about Château Haut-Gléon here. I have yet to visit the region, which I intend to put right soon as it appears to be very beautiful. What’s more, excitingly it is Cathar country and is littered with the ruins of castles destroyed during the crusades against this obscure Christian sect. The local speciality dessert wine – actually more correctly called a mistelle  – is called Cathagène to honour the Cathars, so readers of the The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code should make sure they keep a bottle handy.

Anyway, this white Corbières impressed me so much that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Map of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, click for a larger view.

The winery of Cave d’Embrès et Castelmaure.

2014 Blanc Paysan
PDO / AOC Corbières
SCV Castelmaure / Cave d’Embrès et Castelmaure
Embres & Castelmaure
Aude
Languedoc-Roussillon
France

Cave d’Embrès et Castelmaure is a co-operative that was founded in 1921 and serves two hamlets that have been joined together to form one village. Embrès et Castelmaure is a about 25 km north of Perpignan and sits roughly on the border between Languedoc and Roussillon. As a consequence their website offers both the Catalan (as spoken in Roussillon) and Occitan languages, as well as French itself. The website also plays some very Spanish sounding flamenco music to you which then morphs into some very French jazz. It’s an interesting combination, give it a listen by clicking here.

They farm some 400 hectares and although clearly forward thinking and ambitious, they cling to old ways. They still use the concrete vats installed in the winery in 1921, as they regulate the fermentation temperatures very well. They also have very cannily used all the old perceptions of their problems to their advantage. The region is hot, wild and rugged, so gives low yields, while the slopes are inaccessible by machine and tractors, these things held them back in the past when the only game in the Languedoc was the production of bulk wine. Today the wines have to be good, concentrated, terroir wines and so all that works to their advantage. They farm sustainably and harvest by hand.

This white wine is an unoaked blend of Grenache Blanc with some Grenache Gris, Vermentino (aka Rolle) and Macabeu (aka Macabeo and Viura).

I love the label as it shows a Renault 4 climbing a near perpendicular slope. It seems that the Renault 4, while never the icon that the 2CV was, was actually the main car of French farmers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s and many more of them were made than the more famous and more loved Citroën. The label made me smile as I have memories of being driven up similar slopes in the back of a beige (who else remembers beige cars?) Renault 4 by a Spanish builder in the early 1970s.

The wine is crystal clear and lemony to look at, while the nose offers wild flowers, herbs, pithy grapefruit and a slight, attractively waxy note. The palate is a lovely mix of rich and fresh, with wild herb flavours mingling with citrus and more succulent stone fruits. There is plenty of acidity – from the Vermentino and Macabeu I assume, while the Grenache gives that richness and herbal quality that are so delicious and evocative. A lovely wine with lots of tension between the zestiness and the richness and loads of flavour too. Delicious, refreshing and very easy to drink, this could help wean addicts off Pinot Grigio I think. What’s more it is an utter bargain – 87/100 points.

Try as I might I cannot think of anything that this would not be good with. It is delicious on its own, with fish, chicken, charcuterie, spicy food, cheese – you name it. I loved it with baked camembert.

Available in the UK at £6.50 per bottle from The Wine Society.

 

Sud de France – excitement & variety

The lovely Château Haut-Gléon in Corbières.

Recently I was invited to attend the Vinisud wine fair in Montpellier and had a great time sniffing out all sorts of wines from the south of France. The fair actually covers the whole of southern Europe, but I limited myself to France, otherwise I would still be there, sniffing away.

Foncalieu
I was the guest of the Foncalieu cooperative, which is an impressive outfit based in the Languedoc, but whose operations have spread to the Côtes de Gascogne and Côtes du Rhône.

Michel Bataille

Being an unreformed lefty – albeit of the Champagne variety – I have a soft spot for cooperatives and find many of them to be top notch wine producers and Foncalieu are one of the best. They have a smart and sophisticated wine range and I have long been an admirer of them because they are so good at what they do, both in producing good wines at good prices and in pushing the envelope. What’s more in keeping with the cooperative ethos, everyone seemed to be very nice and to be proud of what they do. The president of the company is the charming Michel Bataille – a great name for a former soldier I thought – and he was quite clear that the company’s mission was to serve the winegrowers, so to market their production efficiently, to defend their rural environment and to produce good wine. To these ends he said they really do need solidarity in all they do and seeing him shaking hands and chatting with the other growers in the co-op – Michel owns vineyards too – it really seemed that there was a genuine comaradarie here.

While in Montpellier I tasted my way through a good cross section of their wines and I was, as ever, impressed by the quality, the packaging, style and the breadth of vision – they offer an Albariño and a Sauvignon Gris for heavens sake – and yet still many UK consumers think the French don’t innovate!

Foncalieu produce a massive array of wines under many different labels, but the principal quality label is Le Versant. This is a stylishly packaged range of nicely made Vins de Pays / P.G.I.s in classic varietals that are classy enough to grace any table – we drank them with stunning food in a 3 star Michelin restaurant in Montpellier and a fine time was had by all.

The Le Versant range.

I was similarly impressed by their deliciously drinkable Domaine Cambos wines from Côtes de Gascogne. This is only a vin de pays / I.G.P. region but it is a wonderfully reliable source of modern French white wines, try some the next time you are wondering what to drink. Their 2013 Domaine Cambos Colombard-Sauvignon blend would keep any Sauvignon drinker happy, mind you so would the more richly textured and fruity 2013 Domaine Cambos Gros Manseng.

I also enjoyed their attractive 2011 Château Saint Angel from the obscure Cabardès appellation, which is in the Montagne Noir near Carcasonne and is one of the very few places in France that traditionally blends Aquitaine (Merlot and Cabernet) and Mediterranean (Syrah) grape varieties.

Click here for UK stockists of Le Versant wines.
Click here for UK stockists of Le Versant wines.

Map of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, click for a larger view.

Château Haut-Gléon
A real highlight for me was discovering Château Haut-Gléon, which although owned by Foncalieu is run entirely separately. This is an estate in Corbières which is apparently pretty well known on the continent, but has very little exposure in the UK and so was completely new to me. I cannot imagine why it isn’t more widely sold over here as the wines are very fine indeed.

I met the director – or directrice as her card says – Karine Meyer at a group dinner one night and got to taste some of her wines and to hear something about the Château. I was pretty excited by them so went to their stand the next day to taste my way through the entire range and my first impressions were confirmed.

Situated some 20 km north of Perpignan, near the sea, in the enticingly named Vallée du Paradis, in Durban-Corbières – one of the 11 terroirs of the Corbières appellation – Haut-Gléon has a long history going back to Roman times. The estate has certainly been making wine since the seventeenth century, but its high reputation for quality only dates since the 1990s when the Duhamel family bought the property and restored it after decades of decline. Foncalieu bought the estate in 2012 and plan to develop it as a wine tourism destination, while maintaining the high quality of the wines produced there.

The distinctive Haut-Gléon bottle.

These are very good wines, full of character and style. The estate enjoys a cool micro-climate which enables them to make elegant examples of red Corbières and to craft excellent whites and rosés too. They round it all off by presenting the wines in a unique and stylish heavy bottle, which gives the wines good recognition.

They make 2 ranges, Domaine de Haut-Gléon, which are  labelled as Vin de Pays de la Vallé du Paradis, not Corbières, but are very good indeed. The main label though is Château Haut-Gléon itself and these A.C. Corbières wines are a little more serious and fine.

As you might expect though, it is the red wines that are the most famous, I tasted the 2009 and 2008 and both were very fine blends of old vine Syrah, Grenache and Carignan indeed with a lovely supple palate, a juicy mix of red and black fruit and judicious use of balancing oak enhancing the delicate spicy quality.

The Château Haut-Gléon rosé is excellent too, this Syrah and Grenache blend is brimming over with fresh cherry and strawberry fruit, with a touch of creamy ripeness on the palate. For me though the big surprise was the superb Château Haut-Gléon white, which was quite delicious. It is an exciting blend of Roussanne, Grenache Blanc and Marsanne aged for 6 months in new oak barrels.

These are really good wines, far superior than most people would expect from the Corbières region whose general reputation is one of offering good value for money rather than finesse. Do try them if you can, you won’t regret it.

Cathagène
Rather excitingly I was also able to try my first ever examples of Cathagène, which is a speciality mistelle or liqueur wine specific to the Corbières region and is a bit like Pineau de Charente, Ratafia de Champagne, Macvin or Floc de Armagnac. Basically it is grape juice from the estate fortified with brandy made from the grapes grown on the estate. Cathagène can be white or red and I greatly enjoyed the examples made by Château Haut-Gléon. The white is a blend of Marsanne and Muscat, while the red is pure Syrah. Both would be splendid after dinner drinks or served with lightish desserts. The white would be perfect with homemade biscuits (a bit of sophisticated dunking beckons perhaps?) while I think the red would be lovely with a black forest roulade.

I was going to write about some more of the exciting things I found in Montpellier, but will leave those for another day, so make sure you come back soon.