There’s something about Maury

For someone who doesn't actually drink a lot I seem to be good at giving the impression I do. More posing in vineyards glass in hand today. I do so much of this I expect the Priory have had me pencilled in for a long time.

Today it’s the vineyards where we get our 'XV'. Mark - also glass in hand - is talking to camera. I'm looking at the 'soil' here. Just fragments of slate and schist. Mark says in olden times winegrowers tending their vines here always carried a hammer. If they saw a rock … they'd whack it! The shattered remains are what is now the 'soil'.

It’s still hard work, here. This morning, at 4 or 5 as soon as there was light, I got woken; the tractors were out. By noon it’s too hot.

The President of the cellar here is a lovely, gentle man who says little and looks too slight to cope with vineyards. Yet he's well-known as 'the President who doesn't have a tractor'. He has 14 hectares and does it all on foot! Respect!

Bright sun now at 11am. Wind getting up. Always windy here … fair whistles down the Agly valley. This is the Vent du Folie. Drives people mad.

The side of the valley, a 500 metre high great limestone cliff, is to the north of me. On the baking scree at its base are some of Mark's vineyards. He is plain mad! You can't possibly grow more that a glassful per vine there. And you'd need crampons.

Justin took us to his vineyards this morning. He and Amanda came here on holiday 8 years ago, drank a bottle of wine made by this scruffy wine-stained guy (Mark) in a shed and decided they'd like to do the same. So bought a few acres of really old vines.


So our Wine Director - a Master of Wine - chose Maury a where he wanted to make his own wine. And our Chai Winemaker still has 14 hectares here.

Several of the world’s best winemakers have also bought vines here. Says something about Maury. And to think that when I first saw and fell for this valley, I was devastated to find there was no wine here to buy! Sure, there were ancient vineyards but all they made then was VDN - Vin Doux Naturel which is, despite its name, not a 'natural' wine but has added brandy. It’s the original 'Port'. They made so much money with VDN they no longer made straight wine. But it was older folk who drank VDN and eventually that market more or less vanished. With much hardship. Whole villages went bankrupt. E.g. Opoul.

So. They went back to making unfortified reds and well, it’s gone very well.

Hervé collects us to visit his old vineyards nearby at the village of La Tour de France which produce our Cabalié. On granite rather than schist if you're interested. Gives a rich rounder wine. And the Romans are supposed to have liked it.

Vineyard has a nice 'Casot'; vigneron’s hut. When I was young I used to dream of buying one of these to camp in on my trips.

Then it’s a long drive west up the valley and across to the cooler, greener region of Limoux; a very important place in the history of Laithwaites . It was here in this sparkling wine town where we got them to let us - as an experiment - make a still chardonnay. It was a huge success. Flying Winemaker Chardonnay. Now they make loads of it themselves.

But our 'La Voute' successor to that FW wine – fruit from here but made in our 'Chai OK' is altogether finer.

Roche Lacour is our main wine here. They've made it for us since the Seventies I think. Has never lost its spot as our top selling fizz.

After tastings and vineyard visits wearily we roll along to Carcassone, them to carry on chatting, me to crash out. No, can't miss la Cité, can I? Keep going Laithwaite.