8 hours ago
5
We all have our coming-of-age story: a transition to adulthood defined by emotional growth. I’ll let my friends be the judge of whether mine’s happened, but in wine terms, I can pinpoint my coming of age to the day I first tasted a white from Côtes Catalanes IGP. What was this nectar? I’d spent a lifetime chugging things I liked (from Um Bongo to supermarket Macon), but this was not a chugger. The bottle was Domaine Gauby’s Les Calcinaires Blanc 2010, a blend of muscat, chardonnay, macabeu and vermentino from the eastern foothills of the Pyrenees in French Catalonia. I had to take my time over something this good, and that felt very grown up indeed.
The Côtes Catalanes IGP (Indication Géographique Protégée) sits within a nook of Languedoc-Roussillon in the very south of France. As an IGP, it is a less prestigious designation than AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée), but one that gives winemakers greater freedom to flex their muscles. Where wines from Côtes de Roussillon AOC have to be particular blends with particular proportions, winemakers in the Côtes Catalanes can produce single-varietal wines with a greater range of grapes; many are organic or biodynamic. They have a renegade spirit I’m sure you can taste in wines that are mineral, full of complex fruit and often have notes of garrigue – Mediterranean scrubby herbs such as thyme and rosemary.
After that first time, I had it in my head that Côtes Catalanes was my thing. The appellation has seldom let me down with its sun-soaked, almost elemental whites, made with macabeu, grenache gris and blanc, or velvety, herbal reds made with cinsault, carignan and grenache, often blended with international varieties such as sauvignon blanc or syrah respectively. Many of these decades-old vines are like eccentric Boomers, producing rich and characterful fruit, especially in tandem with the region’s singular geography.
With its dry and drought-prone climate, this wild and immensely beautiful landscape is not the easiest place to practise viticulture, but it sure pays off. Here you find lots of conditions that make wines interesting: 300 days a year of sunshine and very little rainfall, hot days and cool nights, and strong winds, in this case, the Tramontane from the north-west. What’s more, “we have an amazing mosaic of terroirs,” says Thibault Ponthier of Domaine Le Roc des Anges – soils with almost every geological formation in southern France (schist, marl, clay, limestone, granite) concentrated into less than 5,000 hectares of vines. These make for the kind of intensely mineral, concentrated wines that implore drinkers to reach for the bottle in fervent curiosity – as that first one did me.
As my picks today testify, these are not the cheapest wines, but they quite possibly offer the best value in France. Forget bangs, these are an explosion for your buck and promise emotional growth – of sorts.
L’apprentie Sorcière du Clos des Fees Rosé 2025 £14.75 Yapp, 13%. Bewitching, characterful young vine rosé – richer (and cheaper!) than Provencal iterations.
Le Roc des Anges Segna de Cor 2023 £16–£20 Vinum, 13%. Cor by name and cor by nature – long, velvety and mineral red that sings of Côtes Catalanes
Tramontane Côtes Catalanes Macabeu 2021 £17.10 Amathus, 13%. Named after the wind that cools the old vines at night after hot days – fresh and aromatic with notes of garrigue
Mon P’tit Pithon Blanc 2025 £14.41 Vinatis, 12.5%. Crisp, golden and intense, this macabeu blend is a biodynamic blinder and great gateway to the region’s whites
Un Vent de Folie 100+ £22 Laithwaites, 14.5%. Luscious, long and made in tiny proportions, as you might expect from a grenache-carignan blend from vines that are more than 100 years old
Danjou-Banessy Coste 2024 £46 Dynamic Vines, 12.5%. OK, a gawp-worthy price, but consider this exquisite 100% macabeu for a special occasion. There is nothing I’d rather drink
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