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).
At the 2021 Decanter World Wine Awards, the world’s largest wine competition saw its biggest year to date, with 18,094 wines tasted from 56 countries. Over 15 consecutive days in June 2021, almost 170 expert wine judges, including 44 Masters of Wine and 11 Master Sommeliers, awarded 50 Best in Show, 179 Platinum, 635 Gold, 5,607 Silver and 8,332 Bronze medals. Join Decanter at our Fine Wine Encounter NYC this June, where you will have the opportunity to sample 23 of these top awarded Gold, Plati ...
Many wine styles can seem perplexing at first: imagine the first bottle of Barolo if you only know Barossa Shiraz, or the first bottle of Jura Savagnin if you were brought up on California Chardonnay. With time, thought and repeated tasting, though, comes understanding. You learn each wine’s syntax and lexicon, its hints and inferences. You grasp the ways in which each style communicates. Its beauty dawns, then grows. Rosé wine sales grew 23% worldwide between 2002 and 2019. Its fuel has come fr ...
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 ...