After years in the vinous wilderness, Languedoc & Roussillon have reinvented themselves in the past decade, transforming the reputation of Southern French winemaking from biggest contributor to Europe’s wine lake to the most exciting place in the world to be making wine. There’s more about that in this month’s newsletter, but regular customers will be more than aware that I love the south and have been working hard to increase our selection of interesting wines from the Languedoc & Roussillon.
My efforts in this arena have brought me in to close contact with the guys at the ‘Maison du Languedoc’, sort of an international trade mission set up to promote the food and wine of Southern France. They organise lots of great events across London and beyond, both for consumers and trade buyers like myself – notably the superb ‘Sud de France’ festival taking place throughout September. One of the most important events in their calendar is the ‘Top 40’ tasting, where they showcase the best wines of the region as selected by an esteemed panel featuring some of the country’s foremost experts on southern French wine. And me.
Having cut my teeth at the Decanter World Wine Awards earlier in the year, I was really pleased when they invited me to sit on the Top 40 panel, but I did have a little trepidation about tasting with luminaries like Charles Metcalfe, Anthony Rose (The Independent), Isa Bal (Head sommelier at the Fat Duck), Eric Nairoo (MD of Caves de Pyrenne) and MWs including Peter McCombie and Isabelle Legeron. Quite a line-up, but all thoroughly nice folks who made me feel very welcome despite looking about 12 years old.
The set up was a bit more relaxed than Decanter, although everything was also served blind. We tasted through the wines in flights (there was 153 in total split between the 3 teams) and divided them into yes, no and maybe. Initially we had whittled them down to about 55 yesses, so they were retasted and we got rid of the stragglers. Once we had our top 40, the next task was to decide on the best in show for white, red and sweet, so the highest scoring wines chosen by the 3 teams were retasted and eventually we voted on the best. My pick for both red and white was not the eventual winner (4th and 2nd respectively) but when the wines were revealed I was very happy to see that I had selected Peyre Rose Clos des Cistes as my favourite – one of the wines that we directly import! So it didn’t actually win, but at least I confirmed my opinion that Peyre Rose make the best wine in the Languedoc. I can’t reveal any of the actual results because they will be released to much fanfare in September, but there were some shocking omissions, a suprising winner and plenty of our wines made the cut so i’ll fill you in on all that soon.
Languedoc & Roussillon Top 40
After years in the vinous wilderness, Languedoc & Roussillon have reinvented themselves in the past decade, transforming the reputation of Southern French winemaking from biggest contributor to Europe’s wine lake to the most exciting place in the world to be making wine. There’s more about that in this month’s newsletter, but regular customers will be more than aware that I love the south and have been working hard to increase our selection of interesting wines from the Languedoc & Roussillon.
My efforts in this arena have brought me in to close contact with the guys at the ‘Maison du Languedoc’, sort of an international trade mission set up to promote the food and wine of Southern France. They organise lots of great events across London and beyond, both for consumers and trade buyers like myself – notably the superb ‘Sud de France’ festival taking place throughout September. One of the most important events in their calendar is the ‘Top 40’ tasting, where they showcase the best wines of the region as selected by an esteemed panel featuring some of the country’s foremost experts on southern French wine. And me.
Having cut my teeth at the Decanter World Wine Awards earlier in the year, I was really pleased when they invited me to sit on the Top 40 panel, but I did have a little trepidation about tasting with luminaries like Charles Metcalfe, Anthony Rose (The Independent), Isa Bal (Head sommelier at the Fat Duck), Eric Nairoo (MD of Caves de Pyrenne) and MWs including Peter McCombie and Isabelle Legeron. Quite a line-up, but all thoroughly nice folks who made me feel very welcome despite looking about 12 years old.
The set up was a bit more relaxed than Decanter, although everything was also served blind. We tasted through the wines in flights (there was 153 in total split between the 3 teams) and divided them into yes, no and maybe. Initially we had whittled them down to about 55 yesses, so they were retasted and we got rid of the stragglers. Once we had our top 40, the next task was to decide on the best in show for white, red and sweet, so the highest scoring wines chosen by the 3 teams were retasted and eventually we voted on the best. My pick for both red and white was not the eventual winner (4th and 2nd respectively) but when the wines were revealed I was very happy to see that I had selected Peyre Rose Clos des Cistes as my favourite – one of the wines that we directly import! So it didn’t actually win, but at least I confirmed my opinion that Peyre Rose make the best wine in the Languedoc. I can’t reveal any of the actual results because they will be released to much fanfare in September, but there were some shocking omissions, a suprising winner and plenty of our wines made the cut so i’ll fill you in on all that soon.