Here's a fascinating white wine, worthy of any dinner table, which was perhaps the most surprsing wine find or my recent long sojourn in the Languedoc. Daniel le Conte des Floris may sound like a French aristocrat but was until quite recently a journalist on the French wine magazine La Revue du Vin de France. He got the wine bug to such an extent he had to go and make it and has acquired vines around the little village of Caux north of Béziers close to many other great wine practitioners in Montpeyroux and Jonquieres.
He makes a range of red Coteaux du Languedoc on various soils and with limited yields but it is his two whites based on Carignan Blanc, the pale-skinned mutation of the reviled and much-planted dark-skinned Carignan. Lune Blanche is already fine drinking, a full bodied dry white wine with more than a hint of honeysuckle and lime blossom, perhaps almonds too. There is enormous extract here, as one might expect of yields averaging less than 25 per cent. Carignan Blanc represents 80 per cent of the blend, Grenache Blanc 10 per cent and a blend of whatever else is in the vineyard makes up the rest.
The guiding hands of two experts in Carignan Blanc – Le Conte des Floris' neighbour Olivier Jullien of Jonquieres and Gérard Gauby of Roussillon - can be seen in the serious structure of this wine (Jullien's and Gauby's whites are also of course well worth seeking out, but are already well known). Both alcoholic and malolactic fermentations were accomplished in barrel, with new oak for only 15 per cent of the wine, quite old oak for the rest, and did not finish until well into the year after harvest, having ground to a halt over the winter. The wine was therefore not bottled until early this year.
That is 'white moon'. There is also a Lune Rousse, or 'russet moon', bottling which is basically 70 per cent Lune Blanche plus 30 per cent very low-yielding, extremely ripe Roussanne. It was aged in much younger oak, half of it in new oak. This contains some Roussanne and will probably provide good, serious drinking from next year onwards. but it is 20 euros at the cellar door whereas Lune Blanche, which one can enjoy now, is 15 euros.
Because this is such a new enterprise, distribution is relatively limited. US importer is Peter Weygandt (Weygandt-Metzler Importing Ltd, PO Box 56 Unionville PA, 19375 USA) and there are two Swiss importers, one for the French Swiss, Le Caveau de Bacchus (K&K Promotion, 8 rue de Veyrot, 1217 Meyrin 2) and one for the German Swiss, Dona Gut Weinkellerei (DGW, Dorfstrasse 57, 8330 Pfaffikon-ZH).
In France it is for the moment limited to specific wine shops, mainly in the south: at Perpignan (Le Comptoir des Crus), Narbonne (La Cave à Vin), Toulouse (Domaine de Lastours), Béziers (Clos Saint-Gabriel), Pézenas (A La Vieille Clairette), Montpellier (La Cave des Arceaux, La Cave du Jogging, Le Comptoir des Vins du Languedoc), Nimes (Les Plaisirs de la Table), Marseille (La Part des Anges) and in a few places elsewhere in France: (Besançon, Audincourt), in Paris (L'Epicurien, a well known wine shop in the suburb of Saint-Mandé) and Vini-Ouest distributes it in western France. This is in any case a relatively useful list of superior French wine shops. I'm particularly intrigued by La Cave du Jogging.
Next week, a wine that is available in the UK...
