If you love cheap wine like I do, chances are good that you've once picked up something that was produced in this region. Ever seen those $180NT/bottle French vin d'pays on the wine shelves of Carrefour? Yep, those are it. Many years ago, I brought home a bottle. Upon popping the cork, I was rewarded with a bouquet that consisted of vinegar, fresh compost, and 2 days old roadkill. Naturally, I poured the entire bottle down the toilet. The toilet is still giving me hell about it.
So, why does this region suck so bad? There are two reasons:
1. Languedoc-Rousillon is by far the largest wine producing region in France, and it's all about quantity there. Growers would sell their fruit to giant co-operatives and get paid by tonnage. As any slick-talking MBA can attest, you get what you measure. When growers are incentivized by production numbers and nothing else, they will go for maximum yield with little or no regard for quality. Put it this way, if you get paid the same amount of dough for producing both good stuff and crappy stuff, why wouldn't you want to make crap?
2. As a corollary of #1, the growers plant the varietal that produces the highest yield per acre Naturally, that rules out Pinot Noir. Or Cabernet Sauvignon, or Merlot, or Grenache, or Syrah, or pretty much anything that might have a whiff of quality. Nope, the varietal of choice here is Carignan, which produces wines that are bitter, tannic, and generally unpleasant. But heck, the yield is simply amazing. If Domaine de la Romanee-Conti can hit this sort of production numbers on a per acre basis, its owners would have more money than Carlos Slim.
Now, it's no secret that wine consumption is going downhill fast in Europe. Combine that with the effect of globalization, the growers at Languedoc-Roussillon have fallen on hard times in recent years. No matter how cheap their wines are, there are always cheaper wines from elsewhere. So it's no shocker that nobody wants Languedoc wines these days. Not when Two Buck Chuck is a bit cheaper and loads better.
So, it seems that all hopes are lost, then enters Michel Chapoutier.
By all accounts, Michel Chapoutier is a renegade. He gained control of the family wine negociant business by first defeating his own father in a board room duel. He then proceeded to kick out his aunts, uncles, and cousins by buying out their shares. On the day he took over, Maison Chapoutier was a failing business saddled with a ton of debt. Now, 20 years later, it is one of the most dynamic wine operations in all of Rhone, reigning supreme from Hermitage all the way down to Chateauneuf du Pape.
After conquering Rhone, Michel Chapoutier sets his sight on Languedoc-Roussillon, and this bottle of 2010 Les Vignes de Bila-Haut Cote du Roussillon Village represents that effort. When I saw it in Carrefour, I was floored by the little green sticker above the label. I could scarcely believe it, so I Googled on the spot. Turned out that the importer who slapped on this sticker wasn't lying; Robert Parker did assign a score of 92 ~ 94 to this very vintage.
Search any wine retailer site, and you will quickly find out that a bottle of RP94 wine could go anywhere from $3000NT to the ionosphere. The fact that this bottle sells for $479NT is simply unheard of. Naturally, I backed up the truck.
Like any high scoring wine, it's a laser - powerful, intense, and extremely focused. The bouquet is serious barn yard action with a healthy dose of dark chocolate. The mid-palate is all dark fruit, and it runs on like the Energize Bunny, which just keeps on going and going and going. By the time the show is over, one cannot help but be astonished by the sheer force of this wine.
Parker scored it 92~94. Wine Spectator gave it 90. I give it 89. What can I say? Intense barn yard mixed with dark fruit just ain't my thing. It's not unpleasant by any means. Quite the contrary, the quality is nothing short of outstanding. But like I said, it just ain't my thing. This clearly demonstrates the hazard of buying wine by ratings alone. What pleases the critics may or may not be your cup of tea (or glass of wine), and vice versa. But heck, $479 for a 89 is still a deal I would gladly make anytime.
But in a grand scheme of things, perhaps numerical rating is not the most pertinent point. For the longest time, folks from Vosne-Romanée or Médoc would have us believe that fine wines could only come from these magical parcels of land in the middle of nowhere, and one must pay through the nose for quality and distinction. Well, some guy just pulled a RP94 from arguably the worst wine region in the world. Maybe, just maybe that lousy terroir is no match for the tenacity of the human spirit.
And that, is unassailably cool.
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