We all have our coming-of-age story: a transition to adulthood defined by emotional growth. I’ll let my friends be the judge of whether mine’s happened, but in wine terms, I can pinpoint my coming of age to the day I first tasted a white from Côtes Catalanes IGP. What was this nectar? I’d spent a lifetime chugging things I liked (from Um Bongo to supermarket Macon), but this was not a chugger. The bottle was Domaine Gauby’s Les Calcinaires Blanc 2010, a blend of muscat, chardonnay, macabeu and vermentino from the eastern foothills of the Pyrenees in French Catalonia. I had to take my time over something this good, and that felt very grown up indeed.
The Côtes Catalanes IGP (Indication Géographique Protégée) sits within a nook of Languedoc-Roussillon in the very south of France. As an IGP, it is a less prestigious designation than AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée), but one that gives winemakers greater freedom to flex their muscles. Where wines from Côtes de Roussillon AOC have to be particular blends with particular proportions, winemakers in the Côtes Catalanes can produce single-varietal wines with a greater range of grapes; many are organic or biodynamic. They have a renegade spirit I’m sure you can taste in wines that are mineral, full of complex fruit and often have notes of garrigue – Mediterranean scrubby herbs such as thyme and rosemary.
