Saint-Chinian is an appellation in the Languedoc-roussillon">Languedoc-Roussillon wine region of southern France. It is located between Minervois and Faugeres, which produce similar styles of robust red wine from similar grapes and in a similar landscape. It is also adjacent to the Muscat de Saint-Jean-de-Minervois appellation, which produces Sweet white wines. Therefore, the diversity of the Languedoc region is well demonstrated in this small area.
The AOC Saint-Chinian title was created in 1982, for red and rosé wines only. In 2005, white wines were introduced into the appellation, made from Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and Roussanne. Carbonically macerated Carignan used to characterize the production of Saint-Chinian, but it is gradually being replaced by more Complex wines produced from Syrah, Grenache and Lladoner Pelut. Similarly, the quantity of white wine is increasing.
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 ...
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 ...
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