Home | About Grapevine | Wedding and Party Service | Contact Us | Special Offers | FAQ's | Newsletter | Accessories and Gifts Languedoc-Roussillon A note about ageing the wines : Click here About the Region Languedoc-Roussillon has become almost synonymous with value for money, reliably fruity wines in the New World style. As nice as these may be, it is also a region with its own distinctive winemaking traditions which can come as something of a surprise to the uninitiated. Some Key Regional Grape Varieties. Carignan, Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvèdre,Picpoul (Picpoul de Pinet), Grenache Blan Click here for more grape varieties Click here for other Regions The Region Languedoc-Roussillon is a misnomer; Languedoc and Roussillon are not two parts of one whole, but are in fact separate, utterly distinct regions. Due to the popularity and sheer productive output of its larger neighbour (Languedoc is France’s biggest wine producing region in terms of volume), Roussillon’s delightfully distinctive wines can sometimes be overlooked. Roussillon is effectively French Catalonia and wasn’t absorbed into France until as late as 1659. The area retains a pronounced Catalan flavour in its architecture, dialect, political consciousness, as well as in its cuisine and wines. Many of the great grape varieties of southern France were probably disseminated there by via Spanish and / or Catalan influence, picking up French versions of their names along the way – Monastrell/Mourvèdre, Garncaha/Grenache or Cariñena/ Carignan ,for example. The Catalans also left their mark on wine making techniques with their taste for sweet red fortified wines, thriving today in the form of Banyuls and, in the Languedoc, in the form of the various red vins doux naturels. The dominating feature on the Roussillon landscape are the Pyrenees and it is the mountains which give many Roussillon wines their particular character. The vineyards are mostly up on steep slopes – some dramatically so - baking in the fierce Mediterranean sun, the vines sending their roots deep into the stony mountainsides. Apart from olive trees, nothing but vines could thrive in these conditions; like the olive tree, the more the vine is forced to send its roots seeking for nutrients, the more that effort is rewarded in the intensity of its fruit. Roussillon is more or less equivalent to the area covered by the present day administrative department of Pyrénées-Orientales, that is to say, roughly, the triangle between the easternmost border with Spain where the Pyrenees plunge into the sea, westward along the mountains to the border with Andorra, and north east to the sea again about a third of the way between Perpignan and Narbonne. The name Languedoc derives from the original ‘langue d’oc’, meaning the language of oc. ‘Oc’ is the word for ‘oui’ in Occitan, the southern Gallo-Roman language which once dominated an area stretching from just south of Bordeaux and Lyon into Spain and northwest Italy. It is still spoken in much of the French midi (south). Over the past forty years the region has undergone massive changes in its viticulture, transforming itself from a workhorse region producing low quality bulk vin de table to an area forced by changing markets to focus on quality. These changes have produced a plethora of very low price, good quality wine made with the highest level of modern technological expertise as well as, for a little more money, great improvements in the more traditional wines. It has also seen the dawn of so-called varietal wines in the area. These are wines made predominantly or exclusively from a single grape variety, often a non-traditional variety ‘belonging’ to another region’s terroir – for example Cabernet Sauvignon, Viognier or Chardonnay. In absolute contrast to Roussillon, the landscape where the vines are grown is mostly flat, low-lying alluvial plain, but with some notable exceptions in the foothills of the Cévennes and the Pyrenees in Corbieres. Such terroir produces wines different to Roussillon wines, even though many of the same grape varieties are used. Viticultural Languedoc is the wide sweep of mainly flat, sandy plain that stretches from the eastern bank of the river Rhône at its mouth ( roughly halfway between Montpellier and Marseille), all the way round to the border with Roussillon in the south. Back to top