Fitou is a red wine appellation in the heart of the Languedoc-Roussillon wine region in southern France. The wine takes its name from a small Village located a few kilometres from the Mediterranean coast. The typical Fitou wine is not dissimilar to the reds produced in the neighbouring Corbières (i. e.
rustic, Herbaceous, leathery, medium-bodied and moderately Tannic). Both appellations use the same Grape varieties, and the Terroir of the southern Corbières is very similar to that of Fitou. The distinction between them is one of tradition and pride. Any proposal to absorb the Fitou appellation into the Corbières would be strongly resisted by the proud producers of Fitou.
Carignan is traditionally the emblematic grape variety of Fitou. Today, it shares the spotlight with Grenache.
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 ...
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 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 ...