2007 Mas Granier

Les Marnes

Coteaux du Languedoc Blanc

$16.99 (10% Off This Weekend = $15.29)

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This week's pick is made near to where I sit, and keeps popping up in restaurants and wine bars where I've been loitering... I mean working. Seems logical, except for that millions of wines are made nearby. Montpellier is the capital of the Languedoc, France's (and basically the world's) most prolific wine producing region. We asked for a recommendation from a truly obsessed young entrepreneur and bar-owner yesterday, a man with dreams of moving to San Francisco to open a wine bar because he thinks the French lack entrepreneurial spirit (I like this place but he has a point: making money here would be tough) and what appears? The wines of Mas Granier. They dot the by-the-glass lists in the city center, and everyone here either works in the wine trade, or feels that they were born with an indigenous understanding of wine. And Mas Granier isn't a mass-quantity operation, so the frequency with which it appears is startling.

The Wine... Les Marnes is a blend of mostly Roussanne with some Grenache Blanc. These vines struggle to grow on a stony hilltop of marl (marnes in French), or a soil type defined by its composition of clay with limestone. This is not the most hospitable dirt in which to grow anything, and the struggle of these vines to root down in search for water, absorbing nutrition from this mineral-rich earth, gives the resulting fruit concentration and complexity. The wine, in the end, is luscious. Ripe and fully formed, big and sturdy but at the same time quite pretty. White peach, sage, lavender, and acidity to balance the ripeness.