An interesting bit of news for you.
Come the start of August, Vin de Pays - the wide-reaching term for French wine between table wine and appellation-approved quality wine - will be no more.
In its place will be the new Indication Géographique Protegée system – designed to give current Vin de Pays producers a foot-up to sit alongside existing base appellations like ‘Bordeaux’ – the bottom rung of the ‘Cru’ ladder if you like.
It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out. Vin de Pays has always been a trustworthy term for quality wines at an affordable price.
Many restaurants’ house wines are Vin de Pays. Not surprising really – they’re simple, reliable and easily enhance the gastronomic experience. If there’s value for money to be had, Vin de Pays is usually a good place to start.
The idea is to level the playing field – to get rid of the ‘cheap’ stigma of regional France and align it with the lesser wines of the big regions.
For the sake of the producers at the bottom of the pile, it’s a nice idea. My only hope is that it doesn’t push the prices up.
Remembering that experimenting with grape varieties not permitted by the local appellation automatically demotes wines that might elsewhere have commanded ‘Cru’ status to the humble Vin de Pays category, provided you do your homework, there are some sublime wines available at a very reasonable price.
The new EU rules will take effect from the 2009 harvest, hitting our shelves as and when the wines are released to the trade.
If you’re interested, there’s an excellent article by Helen Savage that puts some of the new changes into context in a bit more detail.
My Wine of the Week
Grand Ardèche Chardonnay 2007 Louis Latour, Vin de Pays des Coteaux de l’Ardèche £8.49 or Buy 2 bottles save £1 = £7.99
It might only be Vin de Pays, but this is a stunning wine.
A great example of just how silky and buttery an oaked chardonnay can be, the ‘Grand Ardeche’ is sophisticated and very sensibly priced.
Maison Louis Latour is world-famous for selecting wines of the highest of quality to appear in its negociant catalogue and this is no exception.
It’s got richness, roundness and depth, with the most beautiful nuttiness and toasted character.
It takes character of the best of Burgundy, the volume of a Bordelaise estate and the sheer pioneering spirit of the Languedoc, rolling out at the price of a wine half it’s quality.
Superb.


I was recently lucky enough to be invited to visit the
After these little sites of interest we headed past Madame Lily Bollinger’s house to their most impressive area – the cellars. These stretch for miles under the streets of Ay, housing thousands upon thousands of bottles, magnums and jeroboams. Many of these are used for the reserve wines which make up the majority of the ‘Special Cuvée’ non-vintage. Most of Bollinger’s grapes come from their own vineyards, which is highly unusual for a Champagne house, as is the fact that 80% of these vineyards are rated as Grand or Premier Cru. A proportion of the reserve wine is fermented in oak barrels as well, adding a little more of the delicious richness that
After emerging back into the sunny courtyard through the impressive arch flanked by the sweeping staircases, we got back in the cars for the return to our hotel to get changed for our evening meal. And then the rains came, sudden and torrential, limiting visibility and completely ruining the views of the rest of Bollinger’s 163 hectares of vines. This, and a slight overrun on the tour, put our schedule back a little but no matter, we swiftly (you have no idea how swiftly!) smartened ourselves up and returned through the monsoon weather to Madame Bollinger’s house for a meal to surpass all that we had seen so far.
We arrived in
A massive wine company that displayed the huge regional differentiation between wines made in different valleys. The most famous brand from this company is Casillero del Diablo – Cellar of the Devil. Let me assure you that the cellar is indeed rather tense. All very much centred for the tourist. We tasted their various wine ranges with Frank Griffoul CYT’s ‘Wine Tasting Coordinator’. My personal favourite was the terrific Winemaker’s Lot Chardonnay.
Cono Sur is a subsidiary of CYT but has retained its independence and makes wines that are a little bit too experimental for the mainstream company. On the labels of some of their wines there are bicycles which are often used by vineyard workers. We had the opportunity to cycle around their main vine plots but had to navigate around the geese that are used as natural pest controllers. We had the chance to help out in the winery as well by ‘punching down’ fermenting grapes.
On the last day Hugo and Danilo from Undurraga invited us all for dinner on our last evening in Chile. We have recently started to stock their sparkling brut from the Maipo valley at Majestic but I hadn’t have the chance to try it yet. I was impressed mainly when you consider the value for money. A light, elegant, dry style great for entertaining. There are not very many sparkling wines from Chile but I expect in a couple of years we’ll see more on the market.