Côtes du Roussillon is an appellation contrôlée for red, white and rosé wines from the Roussillon wine region in southern France. It covers the eastern half of the administrative district of the Pyrénées-Orientales, on the eastern edge of the Pyrenees. The western half of the Pyrenees-Orientales is simply too mountainous for effective viticulture. In the Côtes du Roussillon wine-growing area is the Aspres sub-region.
This corresponds roughly to the Aspres nature park, an area that forms the transition between the lower Pyrenees and the coastal plain of Roussillon below. Only red wines can claim the title Les Aspres, and to obtain it, they must comply with slightly stricter production restrictions than those in force for standard Côtes du Roussillon wines. The typical Côtes du Roussillon red wine is based on the classic Languedoc-Roussillon and southern Rhone Valley Grape varieties, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre, perhaps with some support from their less favoured and slightly rustic cousin, Carignan. Wines from older vineyards may even include a touch of Cinsaut and perhaps even the little known Lledoner Pelut (thought to be a mutation of Grenache Noir).
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 focus of the symposium, unsurprisingly, was on the challenges posed by climate change. As if to illustrate the immediacy of the threat, the symposium took place during a heatwave, with temperatures of over 40°C in Bordeaux and extreme weather events recorded across the coountry: parts of southwest France saw violent storms and winds of 112kph on the evening of 20 June, while vineyards across the Médoc and St-Emilion were damaged by hailstones ‘the size of golfballs’. As Olivier Bernard of D ...
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 ...
