Collioure is a very small appellation in the Roussillon region (also known as French Catalonia) in southeastern France, near the border with Spain on the Mediterranean coast, about 30 kilometers southwest of Perpignan. It produces PowerfulDry red and white wines from France's southernmost Vineyard. The appellation comprises four communes, including the one from which it takes its name, plus Cerbère, Port-Vendres and Banyuls. Collioure wines are the dry table wines of the region, while those bearing the name Banyuls are the Sweet wines produced in exactly the same vineyards.
The proportion of grapes that become Collioure or Banyuls wine in a given year depends on the particular characteristics of the Vintage. Until recently, AOC Collioure wines were exclusively red or rosé wines. Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre make up 60% of Collioure blends, with Carignan and Cinsaut making up the remaining 40% in varying proportions. Mourvèdre is not included in the blend of Banyuls wines, so all the Mourvèdre grapes grown here are destined for Collioure wines.
The Roussillon is home to a range of wine styles, at varying price points. Sweet fortified wines (vin doux naturel) used to dominate production, with still dry wines (vin sec) in the minority. In the last 30 years, however, this has completely changed, and vin sec now makes up the majority (80%) of the Roussillon’s output. The recent Wines of Roussillon tasting, held in London, not only highlighted many good quality dry wines being produced, but also cemented the idea that Roussillon whites are ...
The largest-ever year for entries, an incredible 18,244 wines were judged at the 2022 Decanter World Wine Awards – with just 163 wines awarded a Platinum medal. ‘Winning a Platinum medal is something really exceptional’ said Decanter World Wine Awards Co-Chair Sarah Jane Evans MW. ‘Platinum is like the stratospheric level’ she commented, ‘so it’s really saying to the winemaker: this is a great wine.’ Making up just 0.87% of the total wines tasted at the 2022 c ...
I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...
