Languedoc (formerly Coteaux du Languedoc) is a key appellation used in the Languedoc-Roussillon wine region of southern France. It covers Dry table wines of all three colors (red, white and rosé) from the entire region, but leaves Sweet and Sparkling wines to other more specialized appellations. About 75% of all Languedoc wines are red, with the remaining 25% split roughly down the middle between whites and rosés. The appellation covers most of the Languedoc region and almost a third of all the vineyards in France.
The typical Languedoc red wine is medium-bodied and Fruity. The best examples are slightly heavier and have darker, more savoury aromas, with notes of spice, undergrowth and leather. The Grape varieties used to make them are the classic southern French ones: Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre, often with a touch of Carignan or Cinsaut. The white wines of the appellation are made from Grenache Blanc, Clairette and Bourboulenc, with occasional use of Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne from the Rhône Valley.
It most certainly originates from the Anjou region and is registered in the official catalogue of wine grape varieties on the A1 list. It can also be found in South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Chile, the United States (California), New Zealand, etc. It is said to be a descendant of Savagnin and to have sauvignonasse as its second parent (Jean-Michel Boursiquot 2019). On the other hand, Chenin blanc is the half-brother of verdelho and sauvignon blanc and is the father of colombard.
white wines from the region of Languedoc-Roussillon go well with generally quite well with dishes of pasta, vegetarian or poultry such as recipes of pasta with artichoke hearts and bacon, mushroom, bacon and gruyere quiche or chicken wok with chinese noodles.
On the nose in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon often reveals types of flavors of grapefruit, earthy or lemon zest and sometimes also flavors of saline, mushroom or black fruit. In the mouth in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon is a powerful.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
