In this section we aim to bring you news and useful information on wine, wine tours and the Languedoc area.
The cost of wine explained
It’s an old chestnut I know, but one that keeps cropping up; how much does a bottle of wine cost? When we are seduced by the supermarkets half-price offers or bottles of ‘estate grown’ wine for £3.99 or even £2.99 it’s good to remember how much of this price actually trickles down to the winemaker.
When you buy a £2.99 bottle of wine less than 50p goes to the wine maker and this includes the cost of bottling and labelling as well as the cost of growing the grapes and producing the wine. The final price you pay for a bottle of wine is made up of a number of factors; VAT at 17.5%; the supermarket margin of around 20%; import duty currently at £1.37 on each bottle; shipping to the UK at around 20p a bottle (if you ship by the container load).
Those of you who have visited a Vineyard will appreciate just how much work goes into producing a bottle of wine. The work in the vineyard; pruning, weed, pest and disease control, green harvesting and harvesting the grapes (often by hand); the work in the winery –reception and sorting of the grapes, fermentation, tank and barrel ageing, bottling, labelling and packaging.
There is risk at every stage for the winemaker. If you want to produce AOC wine (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) the yield is restricted - 50 hectolitres per hectare for AOC Minervois and only 45 for Minervois La Livinière. A cold Spring can damage the bud and flower set, a warm and wet Spring promotes disease on the vines, or a dry growing season which restricts yields and can compromise quality (you are not allowed to irrigate AOC wines and therefore cannot irrigate to increase yields to compensate); a wet Autumn can promote rot on the vines or diluting of the grape juice. Bottling, labelling and packaging are essentially a fixed cost, so even if you are using the cheapest, lowest quality bottles you only save a few pence.
Therefore to hit the £2.99 and £3.99 price points you have to be able to produce on an industrial scale, to irrigate, to machine harvest, to use chemicals and fertilisers to control the crop. This does not mean that lower priced, branded wines are necessarily of low quality, in fact the economies of scale that large industrial producers employ allow for investment in temperature controlled stainless steel fermentation tanks and automated production lines. From a price point of view some of the lower priced, branded wines from Chile, South Africa, Australia, and indeed often from the Languedoc in France are a marvel. You get clean wines, with bags of fruit and extremely well made for the price. But, and here’s the rub, do not expect character, do not expect any surprises, you will not find any hidden gems, any unusual or challenging wines, and when you visit France, Italy, California and Australia you will not be lingering long in the vast, featureless, mechanised vineyards that produce the low cost branded wines that are beloved of our supermarkets.
So if you value the varied vineyard landscape of smaller scale wine production, often hugging the contours of the hills, usually with different varieties, growing in adjacent plots, if you want to see minimal chemical intervention, then this comes at a cost. Not a great one, but do not expect to pay £2.99 a bottle and save the environment.
If you want your wine to have some of the flavour and complexity that is imparted by oak, then the quality/cost ratio is further escalated. The 225 litre fût de chêne (the small oak barrel beloved of Burgundy and Bordeaux and used by Vineyard Partners Partner Wineries for many of their wines) cost around 500 Euros each and can be used for only 3 vintages before all the flavour and tannin is extracted from the oak. This immediately puts a premium on the cost of the wine for the winemaker of a minimum of 40p a bottle. Add to this the labour involved in transferring the wine to the barrels, in the care and attention that it requires and the risk involved in the wine spoiling, or not turning out as desired – remember that this is part science and craft and part experience and art - add the fact that you are tying capital up in the wine in barrels for between 6 and 18 months and you can reasonably add another £2 to the cost of a bottle wine.
One of the reasons that we love wine is that it continually presents us with challenges, to surprise and delight us …and occasionally to frustrate and disappoint as well. We enjoy the variations from vintage to vintage, the differences between oaked and un-oaked wines and the large differences in the taste that can be achieved from the same producer by small variations in the blending of the wine.
This is why we should be prepared to pay a couple of pounds extra for an artisanal wine. We know that with the high fixed costs associated with a wine shipped and sold through a UK outlet that an extra £2 in the retail price allows the winemaker to invest more care in the cultivation of the vines, more time, effort and attention in making the wine. So pay £2.99 a bottle and less than 50p goes to the wine maker, pay £5.99 and over £2.50 a bottle can be spent on producing the wine, which can make all the difference, and when you want that special bottle of wine for the weekend spend £8 to £10 a bottle and more than £5 goes to Vigneron for making the wine. You can then reasonably expect to be drinking a wine that has been hand harvested, has minimum chemical intervention, low yields, careful use of new oak and in short a hand crafted wine that will challenge and delight you.
Wine tours and news from the Languedoc
Focus on Grape Varieties
Here is a short peice on one of our personal favourite grape varieties, not widely know outside of France it is increasingly being seen as part of the blend of grape varieties that make up some of the best wines of the Languedoc.
Mourvèdre
Mourvèdre as a cultivated wine variety originated in Spain, where it is called Monastrell. Over 250,000 acres are planted there and, although many vineyards are intermingled with other varieties, only Grenache outnumbers total Monastrell acreage. It is the principal black grape of the five appellations that cluster on Spain's Southeastern Mediterranean Coast, Almansa, Valencia, Alicante, Jumilla, and Yecla. Prior to the late Nineteenth Century phylloxera devastation, Mourvèdre was also widely planted in Southern France.
There are contradictions and anomolies in the growth characteristics and properties of Mourvèdre. It is a very late variety in both bud break and ripening season. It can recover quite well from Spring frosts, but sometimes fail to survive cold Winter temperatures. It craves heat, but is drought-sensitive.
Phylloxera nearly drove Mourvèdre to extinction, because the vines took so poorly to grafting that most vignerons deemed the results not worth the effort. Replanting did not begin seriously in France until after World War II, 60 years after the devastation, when sufficient vinestock was developed that had both adapted to grafting and had a consistent production history. Mourvèdre is a slow-ripening variety that develops tight bunches of grapes that need good ventilation to avoid rot. It seems to do best in windy climates like Southern France, and in parts of Spain and Algeria. Until the late 1960s, however, the main French plantings of Mourvèdre were in Provence, where it is the dominant grape in Bandol (between Toulon and Marseille). Total Mourvèdre vineyards in France increased from 2,200 acres in 1968 to nearly 14,000 by 1988.
On their own, Mourvèdre wines tend to be deep- coloured, quite tannic, somewhat alcoholic, and have generally "spicy" aromas and, sometimes, "gamey" flavours in their youth.
In France it is used a part of the blended red wines in the southern Rhone, often playing a supporting role to Grenache. However, in the right hands Mourvèdre can make a stunning, complex and interesting wine. It is widely used to blend with other varieties across the Languedoc: in fact it is one of the cépages améliorateurs (the improving grape varieties that have been introduced into many of the local AOC regulations as part of the drive to improve overall quality of the wines). It is increasingly being seen as a variety that can add complexity and depth to the blend and if handled correctly make a splendid single cépage wine.
News from the vineyards - an update from our Partner Domaines
This winter and spring in the Languedoc has thankfully been quite wet by local standards with above average precipitation, particularly in April which is normally one of the wettest months, but which had over twice the average rainfall this year. This is a blessing after 2 years of near drought that was beginning to seriously stress the vines and has helped to top up the aquifers of the region.
This winter was cold by local standards, one of the 3 coldest in the last 15 years with a number of quite severe frosts, and this will help to ‘disinfect’ the vineyards keeping pests under control. The wet and quite warm spring has really promoted vine growth and in some cases there was excessive flower set and excess vegetative growth. This entails a green-harvest to remove many of the developing bunches of grapes to allow the plant to concentrate its efforts on between 3 and 5 bunches per vine, promoting complexity and concentration in the mature grapes. A proportion of the excessive leaf growth will also be removed to improve the ventilation and decrease the humidly around the grapes lessening the chance of fungal infections.
The late spring is usually bottling time with the local domains hiring in a mobile bottling plant. Most domains do not have their own equipment for bottling but hire in outside contracts. It’s quite a sight, as the contractors literally set up a small production line in the winery taken out of the back of a lorry. The sterilised bottles are filled, corked, the capsule and labels are put on, and the bottles are packed, usually in boxes of 6 by hand. This year saw Jean-Luc at Domaine de Cantaussel bottle his 2006 Cuvee Cantaussel, their 2007 Côte de Brian and their 2007 white Vermentino VDP’Oc. At Chateau St. Jacques d’Albas Graham has bottles the 2007 Domaine and the 2008 Rosé. They will have a further bottling in the autumn.
The new parcel of Syrah grapes planted last year at St. Jacques are already over a metre high, but it will be at least another 3 years before they take a usable crop from them. Graham planted a hectare of white varieties, Marsanne, Viognier and Vermentino 2 years ago and these are looking strong and healthy and they may get their first usable crop from this next year. In the Languedoc quality wine growers use dry-land farming, only irrigating the newly planted vines a few times in the early weeks. While this cultivation method means that it is 4 or even 5 years before the Vigneron can take a useful crop off the new vines, whereas irrigated vines are often cropped in their third year, it also helps the vines to adapt to the harsh climate of the region.
The young vines are forced to sink their roots deep to find water, often many metres down as they exploit cracks in the bedrock below the shallow soil. This confer significant drought resistance to the vines during the 3 or 4 months of hot, dry weather of the Southern French summer, it also allows the vines to fully exploit the nutrients and trace elements in the very poor soil. However, above and beyond these very practical benefits, dry farmed vines produce a more concentrated juice, one that takes on the characteristic of the terroir and is expressed in the flavour and body of the wine. When the vines are irrigated the roots remain closer to the surface and the vines will not survive drought without continued irrigation. This often dilutes the juice in the ripe grape generating less flavour and terroir expression. This can work well for young, easy drinking, fruity wines, but does not produce vines which age well or have the concentration, or tannins to stand up to food.
Vineyard Tour at Domaine de Cantaussel in April
The weather in the South of France is not wall to wall sunshine all year round and April can be a particularly unpredictable and damp month. However, the vines need the water and continual rain on April 11th didn't stop everyone having a great day! We started with a briefing (and coffee) at the cafe in Siran and then drove up to the beautiful Domaine of Cantaussel where Jean-Luc, Claude and Murielle were waiting to greet us. Jean-Luc gave us a full explanation of the wine-making process, including tasting wine directly from the cuves - which is always such an interesting contrast to the finish product (tasted over lunch). We started lunch today with Claude's wonderful home-made tapenade accompanied by the 2005 and 2006 Vermentino (white) - with very contrasting tastes illustrating the variation between vintages. This was followed by asparagus (just coming into season here) with the VDP Cotes du Brian 2006 and the cuvee Cantaussel 2004 - two very contracting wines but predominantly made with the same grape varieties blended in similar proportions. The main course was coq au vin with pasta with which Jean-Luc served 2004 Pic St Martin Cru Minervois La Liviniere. Dessert today was a rich pot au chocolate beautifully accompanied by Les Solleillades, a big 80% granache wine that makes a splendid accompaniment to desserts or red meat. After as much coffee as wanted everyone left very contented with boots full of wine and lots of talk about when they could return.
'I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for organising the tour as part of our membership. We both had a fantastic afternoon and it was certainly the highlight of our visit to France' Comments from a recent Vineyard partners customer.
A village meal with music and dancing in Siran close to our Partner Vineyards.
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