Domaine Matassa Cuvée Nougé 2005

Yesterday was something of a French classic, a white Bordeaux, with a family run producer making wine that has a history in the region dating back generations.  Today, it’s a different take on the concept of heritage from some unlikely characters in the form of this Domaine Matassa Cuvée Nougé 2005.

This is a Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes, much like the Domaine Lafage Carignan I wrote about back in July.  However, a quick recap might be useful.  VDP can be wine of three different types of geographic designations, and from largest to smallest they are regional, departmental and local.  The larger the area, the more flexibility a producer has in terms of where they source their grapes.  In addition, some regional designations are both familiar internationally and fairly well regarded such as Vin de Pays d’Oc.

Côtes Catalanes is situated in the south of France near the border with Spain.  When I wrote about the Domaine Lafage Carignan I mentioned the warm, Mediterranean climate and the soils, which vary from a combination of decomposed shale and clay with poor drainage through to schist marble and limestone hills, and gravel as you near the sea.  However, I didn’t say anything about Catalonia.

I prefer to focus on wine and not politics, so I’ll be brief.  Catalonia is at present one of the autonomous communities of Spain.  Historically the Principality of Catalonia included area which is now across the border in France, and the region as a whole has a unique language and culture.  Many producers, such as this one, have chosen therefore to use the Côtes Catalanes designation instead of the more widely known Côtes du Roussillon or  d’Oc.

Speaking of this producer, Domaine Matassa was founded by Tom Lubbbe, Nathalie Gauby and Sam Harrop MW in 2002.  Lubbe, apparently born in New Zealand but brought up in South Africa, worked in Swartland and Bordeaux prior to arriving in the Côtes Catalanes and working at Domaine Gauby where he met Nathalie Gauby.  Her family has run the Domain for generations, selling grapes through a co-operative until 1985 when they started making their own wine.  It is now regarded as a top Roussillon estate.  Harrop is a Master of Wine and consultant winemaker, having previously make wine in his native New Zealand, as well as California and Australia, before working with Marks and Spencer, a hugely influential UK retailer.

After the initial purchase of the Clos Matassa vineyard near Le Vivier at 500-600m altitude on granitic soils, the Domaine expanded with the purchase of a number of neighbouring parcels and additional vineyards near Calce, 20km to the east on schist and marl soils at altitudes of 150-200m.  Most vineyards are between 60 and 120 years old, and consist of traditional Catalan varieties such as Carignan, Grenache, Maccabeu, Grenache Gris, Muscat of Alexandria and Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, while the younger vineyards have Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Viognier.  Cabernet Franc, Carignan Blanc, Vermentino, Rolle and Chenin Blanc have also been known to feature in their wines.  Grapes are grown organically, and biodynamic techniques are employed in the vineyard.  Vineyards are plowed, in some cases by mules.

Most wines produced are blends, some co-fermented field blends.  Whites are made by tightly packing whole bunches into a basket press and ageing in 600l old oak barrels.  Reds are fermented as whole bunches with some initial foot crushing, and then transferred to 600l old oak barrels halfway through and kept there for an additional 18-24 months, including malolactic fermentation.

Before I get to this wine itself, a quick note about the grapes.  Maccabeu as it is known in Roussillon and printed on the back label, may be more familiar as Viura in Rioja or Macabeo more generally.  Details can be found in my write up of a varietal example from Borsao, while more information about Muscat is available in my post on the Schild Estate Frontignac and notes about Viognier are given in my Yalumba Virgilius post.

In the glass this wine is clear and bright, with a medium minus lemon green colour and film, not legs, when swirled.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium plus intensity, and notes of lemon and green apple.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus acidity, medium body, medium alcohol, medium plus intensity, and medium length.  There are notes of lime, mandarin, and a bit of saltiness that made me think of Gatorade.  (Note, I have very fond memories of Gatorade going back 30 years to when I was a child playing soccer, so I mean that in the best of all possible ways.)

This is a good wine.  I was initially worried that I had left this bottle in the cellar for too long but it’s holding up well – still developing on the nose.  I don’t know that I would have wanted to give it another seven years, but the fruit is still fresh.  I didn’t get a great deal of complexity beyond some lively citrus, but it was well balanced with a pleasing flavour profile.

Pin in the map is the village of Calce where the producer’s cellar is based, but I have no street address.

Domaine Lafage Tessellae Carignan Vieilles Vignes 2009

First off, I’m not dead.  I’m sure many of you were concerned when I went without posting for almost two weeks.  More importantly, I have given up neither drinking nor writing.  There have been a few concerns, not related to drinking or writing, which have been more pressing over the last fortnight, but with this post I hope to return to form and look forward to bringing you further wine most weekdays.  And to get this week on track, I give you Domaine Lafage Tessellae Carignan Vieilles Vignes 2009.

First off, where was this wine on Carignan Day when I mistakenly ended up with an admittedly very good blend when what I really wanted was a varietal?    At long last I can add Carignan as a varietal to my list.  As far as Carignan goes, I did write a fair bit about it when I reviewed the De Martino, but just for a quick review, it’s a grape that is not universally loved, and in fact was considered something of a pest within the trade due to its use in cheap wine made from highly cropped vines (up to 200HL/HA in some cases).  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s no longer the case entirely, but there are certainly some producers making quality wine from the grape, with much more tightly controlled yields.  The grape is found throughout the warmer areas surrounding the Mediterranean, including North Africa, and can produce wines high in colour, acidity and tannins, though sometimes with a fair whack of bitterness as well.

So in addition to being a varietal Carignan, this wine is interesting to me because it’s a vin de pays, or country wine, though within France that term is being phased out and replaced with Indication Géographique Protégée, which I’ve seen abbreviated as both IGP and PGI.  This category of wine is not new to this blog, though perhaps in this form it is.  I touched on the topic a bit with the IGT wines from the Sicily tasting, in particular the Duca Enrico, which are essentially the Italian version via the overarching EU regulations.  In quality levels, at the high end you have appellations with their strict regulations and rankings, and at the lower end you have table wine which has very little regulation at all.  However, in between there are many wines which are not strictly restricted by appellation rules but which are from a particular region with the right to designate themselves as such.  So vin de pays are from an area, rather than table wine which can be a blend of wine from anywhere, but without so many of the appellation rules to do with permitted varieties, yields, winemaking styles, what have you.

So why do I find them interesting?  Three main reasons:  value, room for innovation, and local scarcity.  First, they can represent very good value.  There’s a great deal of vin de pays produced, and while much of it is very mediocre, there are some excellent wines to be found.  However, since they’re grouped with a large range of competitors, even the very good ones can’t charge a huge premium, and as such you can find very good vin de pays for decent prices.  Second, without established appellation rules, winemakers are free to experiment and innovate in terms of what they plant and how they make their wine.  Vin de pays can be as unconventional as any New World wine, and while not all of them are, I like that experimentation is permitted.  Finally, because these are often value wines that compete on price within Europe, they have a hard time competing against local wines in Australia because of the taxes levied against them before they even get to a shelf.  A five pound sterling bottle of vin de pays might do well competing against a similarly priced Australian bottle in London, but on a shelf here it would cost much more than a local wine of similar quality.  As a result, not a huge amount of vin de pays is available in Australia – it often just isn’t competitive.

Right, so that’s the grape and vin de pays out of the way, but I haven’t said a word about the pays in vin de pays, and in this case it’s Côtes Catalanes.  I’ve only previously written about a single wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, the Picpoul de Pinet, and this wine is from another subregion within the greater area, the Catalan coast.  Vin de pays can be named at three levels – regional, such as Vin de Pays d’Oc which covers all of Languedoc and Roussillon, departmental (which is roughly equivalent to a county), and local.  This is a local designation, having to do with the Catalan ethnic group of what is now Catalonia of northern Spain and southwestern France.

Côtes Catalanes is based in the Pyrenees-Orientales department in the Roussillon region.    The climate is warm Mediterranean, and the soils vary from a combination of decomposed shale and clay with poor drainage through to schist marble and limestone hills, and gravel as you near the sea.  While there are certainly plantings of Carignan, Grenache and Syrah are the dominant red varieties, with a mix of traditional and international whites.

Domaine Lafage is the estate of a family which has been cultivating vines in the region for six generations, going back as far as the late 1800s.  The label itself is a relatively recent invention of Jean-Marc Lafage, who with his wife Elaine, established it in 1996 after years of wine studies and work throughout the New World.  Their holdings are 138 HA of vines across 200 HA total, with plantings of Muscat, Chardonnay, and Grenache, in addition to Carignan (among others) that go into AOC Côtes du Roussillon wines, various vins de pays, vins doux naturels, and a line of bag in box wines.

This wine is made from grapes grown in the Agly Valley, with soils of black shale and schist.  In terms of yields, this wine is made from grapes that yielded roughly 20HL/HA, whereas at the extreme some vineyards can bring in ten times as much.

In the glass this wine is clear and bright, medium plus ruby colour, with slow thin legs when swirled.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with notes of raspberry, perfume and dark chocolate.  The palate is dry with medium acidity, medium minus body, medium plus tannins, medium plus alcohol, and medium flavour intensity.  There are notes of plum, raspberry, blueberry, some blood and meat, and a little chocolate.  It has a medium length and a chocolate finish.

This is a good quality wine – interesting and worth a try.  It’s certainly not the Carignan that is the source of so many complaints.  The tannins are supple, the fruit sweet but with rich chocolate.  There’s a fair amount of complexity for a very unpretentious wine.  It’s not a wine that’s going to change your life, but certainly one worth drinking.