Maison Tranquil

You won’t find a better region in France to go wine tasting – the wines here not only (increasingly) good, they’re also very interesting, and there are plenty of wine makers keen to show off and talk about their latest creations. You’ll also find a lot less of the awful snobbery that surrounds wine further north in France – Languedoc is the ‘wild south’ when it comes to wine, and the ‘vignerons’ here tend to be more innovative and less formal about the wines they produce.

Languedoc also offers a greater variety of wines than anywhere in the world – from the fruity and delicious reds of St Chinian, Faugères and the Corbières, to crisp white PicPouls of the coast, honeyed Viogniers, the delightfully bubbly Blanquette and Crémant de Limoux, superb muscats of Frontignan and Minervois, and increasingly good rosés produced just about everywhere. There’s also a huge degree of variety within each type of wine. Whereas turgid tradition dominates in Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne, the winemakers of Languedoc – often from the ‘New World’ – are happily experimenting with all sorts of exciting combinations of grape varieties, flaunting age-old rules as they go, and producing some truly spectacular results. At the end of the day, that’s the really fun thing about tasting wine at its source – getting to chat with the wine makers themselves about their wine-making philosophies and how they went about producing the wines on offer in their tasting rooms. It all makes for superb dinner-party conversation when you serve up that delicious bottle of vieux Carignan that you discovered in the back of beyond.

For a personalised tour and an insight into the intricacies of local wines and wine growing techniques, local gastronomic expert Angus Longstaff offers his expertise, for more information visit www.wine-tours-south-france.com

Here is a list of some our favourite vineyards local to us that offer ‘degustations’, a couple even do informative wine tours too…

Domaine Capdepon              www.capdepon.fr

Domaine Girard                      www.domaine-girard.eu

Domaine Gayda                     www.domainegayda.com

Chateau Guillhem                  www.chateauguilhem.com

Domaine Le Fort                    www.domainelefort.com

Domaine O’Vineyards           www.ovineyards.com