Roger Scruton on the admirable fortitude of the wine-growers of southern France
In 1907, the wine-based economy of southern France was wrecked by phylloxera. Only growers in the renowned exporting vineyards could afford the costly business of grafting on to stocks imported from America, and whole areas of the Languedoc found themselves grapeless and - worse - wineless.
Not surprisingly, the first effect of this was to produce a grim and unforgiving peasantry, intent on punishing the officials of the Third Republic and, if possible, gaining access to their cellars. The people of Béziers, Perpignan, Carcassonne and Nîmes rallied behind one Marcellin Albert and induced mayors across the Languedoc to send back their mayoral sashes and close the town halls. The obvious remedy was to release enough wine from the cellars of the Assemblée Nationale to quench the protesters' thirst. Instead Georges Clemenceau sent in the troops. Five people were killed and more than a hundred wounded, and Albert was imprisoned in Montpellier. The peasants got the message and the vineyards of the Languedoc remained unplanted for half a century.
In the steady revival of the region since the Second World War, one tiny enclave has led the way, earning its own appellation for red and rosé in 1982, and for white last year. This is the area centred on Faugères, north of Béziers, and incorporating neighbouring communes with such wonderful names as Caussiniojouls and Cabrerolles. The population of the Faugères appellation is roughly 3,000, down from 4,750 a century ago, and the wine production is still under 100,000 litres. That's less than 330 litres per person, which, at a litre a day, doesn't leave much room for exports. Still, you can occasionally find the reds washed up on distant shores, and you should certainly do your duty by the long-suffering peasantry of Faugères and purchase them. A complex blend of Cinsault, Carignan, Syrah, Mourvèdre and Grenache, the reds have the bony structure of a vin de garde beneath a costume of summer fruit that flutters charmingly in its own endogenous breezes.
Corney & Barrow's offer of summer wines includes a 2004 Faugères from the village of La Liquière, where the Vidal family has been making wines since the 17th century. This, from the Vidals' Château de la Liquière, is a full, ripe wine that will improve with bottle age. It does not have the density of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape; but what it lacks in warmth it supplies in sunlight, smiling cheerfully from the glass and shining down the long, dark passage to the man within. Drinking such a wine, you taste the deep attachment to the soil that has enabled places such as Faugères to live and die and live again. And you understand the great error of the European Commission which, instead of defying the health fascists and urging us to drink more wine, wants to complete the work of phylloxera by grubbing up the little vineyards. A pity we can't graft the EC on to American roots.
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