Picpoul de Pinet has descended on London in force. Is it worth the hype?
For as long as I can recall, the British wine trade has had a French dry white wine which has enjoyed special status in high-end restaurant sales, the sort of thing that is meant to go well with fish – oysters in particular; something which won’t break the bank. If you go back far enough it was Chablis, but those days are long gone: prices went up and the wine became too chichi for most of our pockets – restaurants charge diners anything up to four times the sum they pay their suppliers. Next came Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé and other Sauvignon Blanc-based whites from the Central Loire Valley, but again, prices rose and growers were inspired by increased sales to make their wines more sophisticated, thereby removing that innocent charm that made them popular in the first place. When these Loire growths became too dear in their turn, restaurants began to stock Muscadet from the mouth of the river, but the cycle began anew, prices rose and a new affluence inspired growers to play about with oak casks. Muscadet has become old hat in its turn, and the laurels have passed to Picpoul de Pinet.
To some extent Picpoul is the best yet, as it might be said to enjoy a symbiotic relationship with fish. Made from an indigenous grape variety of the same name, it actually comes from the low hills composed of clay, sand and pebbles lying in a triangle between Sète, Agde and Pézenas that look down on the oyster and mussel beds in the saltwater Lake Thau. The ‘lagoon’ produces some ten percent of all France’s oysters. The need to keep fish and shellfish healthy means that the use of chemicals has long been discouraged. While other grape varieties in the southern littoral produce headbanging levels of alcohol in wine, little Picpoul generally comes out at a modest 12.5 percent. With a little carbon dioxide trapped in the bottle and an endearing slightly bitter orange tang coupled with just a hint of salt, it is a light-hearted wine and possesses a huge tolerance of fish and of course, oysters.
Until very recently Picpoul was a bit of a Cinderella. It was simply a local grape which companies in Sète and the little port of Marseillan used to cook up French imitations of Malaga and Madeira and even more importantly, vermouth. The market for these brews was chiefly the French North African colonies. Almost all of this has disappeared these days but the excellent Noilly Prat is still in Marseillan and continues to use Picpoul for its base wines which are blended with cooked wines and herbs and spices. On my visits to the company Picpoul has always been served up with our meals in local restaurants, naturally after a few sharpeners of Noilly Prat.
Picpoul descended on London in force at the beginning of February, ostensibly to distribute a few copies of a new book on the wine written by my old friend Marc Médevielle. Marc explained that Picpoul began life as a black grape, and it was a black grape that the philosopher John Locke sampled in Montpellier in 1674 when he penned his opuscule on the Growth and Culture of Vines and Olives. Black Picpoul is still a permitted element in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Even the modern green Picpoul has a tendency to revert to its black nature if oxidised, and the wine turns pink.
Picpoul was first recognised an ‘AOC’ in 1985 but as part of the general Coteaux de Languedoc appellation. Production was around 13,000 hectolitres then. Since 2013 it has had its own appellation (AOP) and produces about 70,000 hectolitres. The local appellation had assembled twenty-two different Picpouls for us the other night, and almost all of them had the same light-hearted quality to them. Having tasted all but one, I came to the conclusion the younger the wine the better it was, and there was no need for corks, a simple screwcap would be ideal to keep the wine as fresh as possible.
Of course, the British now take a third of all Picpoul which means a consumption of some three or four million bottles a year. Can it be that we are heading for the usual crash? If that is indeed the case, let’s enjoy our Picpoul while it lasts.
Recommendation: My favourite wine of the tasting was the 2018 from Domaine Gaujal, one of the great pioneers of the region. The wine had more weight and concentration than some of the others with an attractive taste of oranges and a decent acidity that would be ideal for fish and shellfish. It is available from Yapp at £11.75 a bottle or £141 a case.
