From one of the most inhospitable vineyard areas in France, you really wouldn't want to have a holiday home here, but it is the home of some rather grand old gnarly Carignan and Cinsault and has been discovered by a trio of artists including Jeremy winemaker and friends (one is an English writer of musicals). The wine is really artisanal rustic in nature but really beautifully made with haunting flavours and intrinsic quality.
Andrew Jefford – Andrewjefford.com
I left Pézenas for a close look at Terrasses du Larzac. Where is the greatest terroir in
Languedoc? You could make a case for Faugères, for Pic St Loup, for parts of St Chinian, for Minervois La Livinière, maybe for La Clape, but after my trip I have to say that if you were to write me out a cheque for a million euros and tell me to go to find somewhere to make great red wine, I would look most closely of all at Terrasses du Larzac.
(By the way, I am not insulting French Catalonia by including it, as French wine law now
uncomfortably does, in “Languedoc”. For me, Roussillon is another region altogether.)
Terrasses du Larzac is a mineral playground with an least five internal terroirs. After my trip, I know a little more than I did, but it’s wonderfully complex and there’s lots more to learn. Mas Jullien, Grange des Pères and Mas de Daumas Gassac have been variously responsible for most of the reputation of the area so far, but there are others on the way up, most notably La Pèira en la Damasèla (which, like Mas Jullien, lies near Jonquières).
This is the domain I referred to in my last blog entry; theirs are the unknown wines I will be
writing about in my ‘One Bottle’ column for World of Fine Wine issue 21. I try to avoid the kind of macho superlatives which can devalue the currency of wine criticism, but the efforts which the team at La Pèira have made with the 2005, 2006 and 2007 vintages, sampled in the UK, really did “blow me away.” Indeed they blew me all the way to the vineyards and the new, spotless winery, where I met winemaker Jérémie Depierre, who has worked all over France and obviously learned a huge amount along the way, and Rob Dougan, whose initiative and project it is (with his partner Karine, a Mauritienne who grew up near Montpellier). R&K live in the UK but commute, EasyJet-style, to help make it happen with the talented J. Those of you better versed than me in the intricacies of the
contemporary music scene may already know Rob. If not, tuck in:
http://www.robdougan.org/
http://www.myspace.com/douganrob
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Furious-Angels-Bonus-Instrumental-
CD/dp/B00009V3....
Actually, I was rather nervous about visiting since I had liked
these wines so much that I thought I might have gone (stand
by for another military cliché) over the top in that WOFW piece.
We tasted the component parts of the `07 blend again. Phew! I
hadn’t. Awesome – and that’s the last macho superlative today.
I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted better Mourvèdre; certainly not
since I was last in Bandol. Rob looks very cool and dashing on all his websites but he was looking rather bedraggled and poète maudit when we met; when I asked where the money had come from to make these
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