We arrived in the Languedoc in July just a few days after the terrible hailstorms had cut a massive swathe of bruised, shattered, brown vines through the south east of the Minervois zone. This picture, taken with the hills of the north Corbières in the background, gives some idea of the miserable devastation.
While I was there I spent much of the time at my desk hard at work updating the Oxford Companion to Wine for its 4th edition due out in a year's time (as Julia was doing the same thing for the viti and vini entries in London)...