Roussillon Wine
Discover the French Wine region of Roussillon
The Roussillon wine producing area stretches from South of Port Vendres, virtually in Spain, to some 30 miles north of Perpignan. It is the warmest of France's wine regions and for a long time was considered as the maker of fortified dessert wines and very little else. The Roussillon wine region benefits from such heat due to the surrounding Pyrenees mountains that act as an amphitheatre to trap warm and create its own mesoclimate. Within the last 15 years or so many Roussillon wine growers have given up the sweet option and they started making table wines of astonishing distinction. Grenache the main grape for the red wines is mosty used with great success, and although the whites are again not easy to make because of the excessive heat, and there more grapes for white wine than red, however there is an exception: The muscat sec, picked early in August, it keeps freshness, dryness and sufficient acidity to captivate and fascinate without loosing the Muscat taste. Some rosé wines are also worth mentionning. Overall Roussillon wine has not quite reached the level and variety of the Languedoc, but there are some noticebale exceptions particularly from Domaine Boudau.
