Languedocs you’ll be happy to pay a little more for

Tesco Finest St-Chinian, France 2022 (£9.50, Tesco)

Whenever I catch myself romanticising the life of a winegrower as a bucolic idyll filled with fine bottles and sunset meals on gorgeous terraces, I need only remind myself of the harsh realities of life for many if not most vignerons in the Languedoc. At a time of falling consumption and rising costs of production, life here in France’s vast winemaking heartland on the western side of the country’s Mediterranean south is tough: very few make a living beyond the minimum wage, and many, unable to reach even that level, have given up entirely. Climate change has bitten hard here too, bringing drought, shrunken yields and the constant threat of the kind of devastating wildfires that ripped through the region in August. There is, then, a cruel kind of irony in the fact that the region is simultaneously one of the most dynamic in Europe – an almost limitless source of deliciously gutsy, character-filled, hillside herb-filled reds as Tesco’s perennially excellent rouge from St-Chinian.

Bruno Lafon Le Fruit Défendu Rouge, Vin de France, France 2024 (£11.80, Haynes, Hanson & Clark)

While retailers and importers all over the world often look to the vineyards of the Languedoc – and neighbouring Roussillon – as a place for filling some of the very cheapest slots in their ranges, it’s when you start spending a little more than the average (around £6.30 in the UK) that you begin to get the best of the region – and a more sustainable price for the producers. I’m thinking here of wines such as a pair of reds on offer for £9 at M&S from the family-run Domaine Mandeville. The sinewy, dark, blackberry juicy, aniseed-spicy M&S Domaine Mandeville Carignan, IGP Pays d’Oc 2024, is made from the muscular local grape variety carignan, while the subtly forest-floor earthiness and light-textured red berry juiciness of M&S Domaine Mandeville Pinot Noir, IGP Pays d’Oc 2024 is a rare example of a successful southern example of pinot noir, a grape variety from further north in Burgundy, the homeland of Bruno Lafon, the winemaker behind the fragrant, luminously sun-and-fun-filled Le Fruit Défendu.

Domaine Jones Vieilles Vignes Fitou, France 2023 (£15.50, The Wine Society; Booths)

Bruno Lafon is an early example of what has become a far from unusual phenomenon in the Languedoc-Roussillon: a French vigneron drawn to the warm south by its vast potential for high-quality wine made from vineyards that are both much easier and much cheaper to buy than they would be in more acclaimed French regions further north such as Bordeaux, the Rhône, or Lafon’s own home region in Burgundy. Lafon, who moved to the region in the 1990s, has an equally delightful white, Le Fruit Défendu Blanc 2024 (£11.80, hhandc.co.uk) with the same qualities of brightness and drinkability as the red, combined with ripe, sunny, engagingly citrussy fruit. But it’’s not just French winegrowers who have been lured south. One of the region’s most adventurous and consistently excellent winemakers is the Leicestershire-born Katie Jones, who made the first vintage under her Domaine Jones label in 2009, after working for years for the local co-op in Tuchan in Fitou, location for the carignan, grenache and syrah she crafts into this magnificently deep, dark, but polished, and broodingly brilliant red.