Va-va-voom! I had this wine the other
night and was enraptured. It was splendid
- rich, smooth, and concentrated. Of course,
it's a 2005 - the year the grapes were at
their most beautiful and practically made
themselves into wine without bothering the
winemaker at all.
I can't really say I discovered Mas de
l'Ecriture. Robert Parker got there ahead of
me and planted the big 90 on one of
proprietor Pascal Fulla's wines and Andrew
Jefford, who wrote The New France (my
current favorite book on French wines)
includes the domaine in his summary of the
best growers in the Languedoc-Roussillon, but
their footprints were still fresh when I got
there.
It takes a lot of guts to give up being a
high-profile attorney in Montpellier to climb
up on a tractor in the vineyards down in the
middle of the Languedoc-Roussillon, but in
the 1990s that's exactly what Pascal
Fulla did. It didn't take him long to
discover he was a pretty darn good winemaker.
I had Pascal's Cuvée Emotion amid a
sea of other wines when I visited the
Languedoc not long ago, and his wine bobbed
right to the top. A clear winner. You should
have been a fly on the wall when I took my
first sips of my Mas de l'Ecriture the other
night - I got pretty animated -
Emotional, you could say. This wine
won't last through the week at the Hurley
house.
For those unfamiliar with the area, the
Languedoc wine region rings the rim of the
Mediterranean and runs roughly from the city
of Nimes, westward to a bit north of
Perpignan where Roussillon takes over and
continues south to the border of Spain.
The Languedoc is the place to find
extraordinary wines that won't break the
bank. I say extraordinary because there
is a bit of a wine revolution going on in the
Languedoc these days. As the old guard dies
out and the new sweeps in, there have been
momentous changes in the way grapes are grown
and how wine is made. No more machine-picking
all the grapes (whether ripe or not) and
trucking the load off to the cooperative to
be vinified in the communal vat.
Now, growers are vinifying and bottling their
own juice. They have lowered yields
dramatically - sometimes, like at Mas de
l'Ecriture, to half the region's
former level. Hand-picking, careful
selection, oak-ageing - all the technologies
reserved for Burgundy and Bordeaux have
arrived at the Languedoc.
The Mas de l'Ecriture is a pristine,
pink-hued, modern winery in the village of
Jonquieres. Mas de l'Ecriture is a Coteaux de
Languedoc wine.
Imagine several inkblots of land, all
different sizes and shapes, strewn about from
Nimes to Narbonne. These vineyard sites are
recognized as having superior terroir.
These are the Coteaux de Languedoc. Within
these areas there are even better
parcels, such as the Terrasses du Larzac,
where the vineyard of Mas de l'Ecriture is
located.
The winery rises out of a valley on flat land
between hills. The soil is made of
limestone, clay, and small stones - a magical
combination that both drains well, during
the often quite violent rainstorms, and holds
moisture well, during the equally frequent
droughts. In addition, the vineyards are
regularly swept by the Mistral, which keeps
the pests away.
Mas de l'Ecriture has 12 hectares under
vines. The work in the winery is as
meticulous as that in the vineyard. Pascal
takes no shortcuts raising his grapes: he
uses no herbicides, he keeps his yields very
low, he hand-picks, he sorts his berries not
once but twice to eliminate any unripe or
unhealthy grapes, and in return, his fruit
sings for him.
Cuvée Emotion is a fresh, fruity wine
with a garnet robe and aromas of red fruit,
blackberries, and a bit of garrigue
(those scrubby outcroppings of lavender and
herbs known best in the Rhone Valley). It is
a fearless wine, not afraid of spicy stews
and powerful cheeses, but at the same time
smooth, with penetrating depth and great
length. A lot of people are coming back for
seconds on this wine. Find out why.
Cynthia Hurley
