Join Beau and David talk about this month’s Explore 4.
Compared to the somewhat sparse South West (which we visited a few editions ago), Mediterranean France is a vast, densely populated wine landscape. Stretching from France’s border with Spain to its border with Italy—and covering some 1,100 kilometers of mainland coastline—this is a long way from Bordeaux and Burgundy, in style and price. And that’s what’s great about it: When it comes to French wine values, the Mediterranean is the place to be.
While the Languedoc and Southern Rhône Valley are best-known for ripe, luscious reds from Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Carignane, Provence has famously turned into rosé country. Less talked-about (in Provence and elsewhere) are the often-revelatory whites, which, depending on vineyard and variety, often pick up a saline quality thanks to seaborne currents. We hope you enjoy this month’s assortment.
__
Don’t Forget to Subscribe to our channels and emails:
Daily Discoveries – https://sommselect.com/pages/daily-discovery Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/sommselect/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/sommselect
Wine Clubs – https://sommselect.com/pages/wine-clubs
__
Wine shop -https://sommselect.com/collections/wine-shop
[Music] hello again everybody my name is David Lynch s select I’m here with Bo Rapier we are uh the team behind the S select clubs uh and today this is a club that’s very close to my heart we created this a couple years ago it’s called the explore 4 and the idea behind the explore for really is to open yourself up to new experiences first and formost that would be suggested by the name Explorer but also to taste Wines in a way that a su might taste wines and to sort of try to take deep Dives on like items uh that could be like items from a particular region it might be four examples of the same grape variety as grown in different parts of the world it might be organized each each month we have a different theme that we tackle and the idea is to sort of educate yourself about wine by comparing things that are similar and yet uh and different at the same time and so uh this month we created a theme uh around Mediterranean France which is a pretty broad subject it’s not easy to tackle Mediterranean France in four wines uh but what I tend to do is I’ll say okay here’s the theme and I’ll go to Bo and say all right let’s between us put our heads together and figure out how can we best represent Mediterranean France in four wines y right and when people think about Mediterranean France if you think about it at all I hope you do you know you think about port cities and towns like Marseilles uh n uh maybe the island maybe the exactly the can of course uh the island of Cor perhaps uh but there’s a pretty broad Mediterranean part of France that covers a good 1200 Mi of Coastline just on the mainland okay and so there are a lot of wine Appalachians across there and so what we wanted to try to express because as samoes we definitely taste wines that we feel have a very Mediterranean character to them great and what would you say like when you think about Mediterranean French wine what what do you what to mine first for you well I mean I mean it’s all about you know the geology and the geography of that region right you’ve got the Mediterranean first of all you’ve got this big they call it like the big blue I think is what the French call it influencing um all of the uh the weather there and then you have the hills that they kind of rise up above there you’re getting higher and higher and all the the the the strong breezes you know that that dial um hot days cool nights you know that’s that’s Mediterranean Mediteranean France to me and it’s also you know from a wine perspective it’s an ancient wine gr region and it’s super diverse there’s all kinds of Tero Wars there’s all kinds of grapes they’ve been you know the Romans you know planted certain grapes there 2,000 years ago and it’s kind of evolved from there but I mean basically we’re talking about the influence of of the sea and of the mountains and of the the wind the minstral wind that comes down those are the three the M all those are the three main kind of components to me of what broader Mediterranean France is I think from a perspective of okay what does that mean for wine there are a couple of things that stand out first of all most of what first of all there’s three main sort of regions that we tackled when we talked about Mediterranean France one is provance best known of course for its roses okay uh but lesser known and not as much appreciated for its amazing white wines as well as some very delicious and distinctive Reds but for the most part I think when people think about Mediterranean France I think about plush deep rich red wines from granach sir mued and to a lesser extent Caron I’m I happen to be a huge Caron fan and we have a wine that has a healthy percentage of Caron in this month’s pack as a result but what we tried to represent here was the sort of as big a picture view as we could to kind of give our members this idea of like okay what is a Mediterranean French wine all about so let’s start with a Mediterranean French white more specifically a white from the proval app appalation of ciss not to be confused with the Blackberry lure okay Cassis is an actual Port Town on the Mediterranean Sea not far from the town of bandol right on the coast spectacular Place pretty well touristed yeah I mean and not well known for its wines at all but this Blanc really spoke to me because to me it had this combination of the grape varieties that are typical to this place as well as the personality of the wines that are typical of this place yeah I mean as you said Cassis you can’t get more like you know French Riviera than than castis it is literally on the ocean little Cliffs falling to the beach um and the vines are right there you know right on the ocean domain benol is probably um you know I mean there’s not a lot of wine that comes in here but they’re probably the best and the most well-known um this is a classic blend of the grapes that you find down there rousan being the dominant that’s bringing texture kind of an oily kind of a richness to the wine and then Claret which brings a burst of minerality sea salt freshness um it’s it’s just it really is kind of the wine that you would think of if you’re sitting there by the beach on the French Rivier I think there’s a reference point for a lot of people when it comes to Mediterranean French wine which is chatan DAP chatan dap is uh located near aeno which is where at one point in history uh the papal residents shifted from Rome to um to aeno in in Mediterranean France and in so doing shatu means the new Chateau of the Pope the new house of the Pope and for a long time that was the papal residence and chatan toop both red and white are kind of models for a lot of wines that are made throughout the Mediterranean Basin whether it’s a textured white wine like this rousan is a grape that has kind of lower acidity almost this kind of bees waxy quality and it’s buffed up with some crisp whites Claret most most most notably that helps with its acidity and yet I also get like a little bit of a sea spray quality here there’s like this exotic like kind of honeysuckle wildf flower kind of thing but then a nice little sea spray quality as well yep it’s truly distinct very Mediterranean um although obviously think that’s mediter band r R is the the top yeah yeah I mean this you know it’s Ros in general has taken you know the wine rolled by storm or the past couple decades it’s widely considered now that bandol makes you know the kind of the top expression of provansal Ros um they’ve been doing it for a long time but the recognition has come in the past couple decades and you know I think one of the main reasons and this wine here from uh from gallon 10 shows this off really well that that this kind of stands out is they use a lot of MRA in their in the Ros just going to say that yeah and that really like uh adds a sort of an extra layer of complexity um of of sort of depth to Rosé that’s otherwise still extremely refreshing you know bright sunny citrusy but you have that that that little bit of extra you know savoriness to it and that kind of elevates it to make it you know the top provans Sol one the other thing about mued and bandal Ros is that really like when people talk about this idea of terroir and wine terroir is this French it’s really kind of a term of art it’s not really a word that has a direct translation it’s more of a term and it speaks not just to the soil that the wine is grown in but the overall environment that the wine is grown in and in many cases in a place like bandol these grape Vines are growing next to fields of lavender among other things among other aromatic Shrubbery if you will called gig and so when you taste this wine you taste the place in a very visceral way that isn’t necessarily related to soil it’s also like what’s SP around everything that’s going around it yeah and and now we go to fer and a very similar story here of course we’re far not you know we’re relatively far away from bandal now we’re in the long we’re in the long do we’ve gone we’ve gone up the mountains down the coast pretty high elevation and you know up here you’re going to have that really excellent combination of you still get a hot dry day during the summer and then at night the winds come and it cools down dramatically and that allows the grapes to sort of ripen at a nice slow um Pace throughout the growing season and it makes wines that are both robust and and and full bodied and plush and yet also lifted and mineral um and I think this is you know a perfect example of that Fier is an Appalachian in the ladok region which occupies a pretty broad swath of the sort of eastern part of the Mediterranean France so as you reach down towards the Pyrenees that form its border with Spain this is where we’re talking about this wine has a pretty healthy percentage of a grape called Caron which is unfairly characterized as kind of a Workhorse variety it lends a lot of like dark fruit to the wine But ultimately what you get from the longood do historically is a wine that just it there just so much pleasure there like it’s just such a rich enveloping velvety style of wine and a lot of people as I said before a lot of people who were introduced to Mediterranean France French wine via chatti pop are going to find something to love here for a much more affordable price but if you have opportunity to pop our final wine here is really going to uh going to going to take the cake so to speak cuz essentially what you have here is a shat to pop in all but name correct correct very well put yeah so you know CL Caillou does make shot to pup they have a Vineyard that just for sort of obscure historical reasons sits just beyond where they’re allowed to call it chatan to pop but we have the same blend of ganach dominant uh great varieties MRA SRA um we have very similar terar here you’re talking about you know these ancient riverbed stones that soak up heat during the day we lease it at night during those cold nights and you know it to me it I mean and a blind tasting I’m saying shat to pop when I taste this wine that’s really I mean the what we wanted to try to communicate here was this idea that yes it’s a hot climate it’s a dry climate and it’s a place but it’s a place where there’s a lot of like you can really feel not only the influence of that garig that I mentioned that sort of aromatic Scrub but also just the influence of something Beyond soil and so obviously climate is a factor obviously proximity to the sea is a factor all these things and they all factor into these wines and they give them a very distinctive personality so that at some point in the future you’re going to say you’re going to taste the wine and say that has a very Mediterranean feel to it and that was our goal with creating this club yeah and tasting the wine day I think we I think we did a pretty good job yeah I think so too I agree with you [Music] closing