My Life in Languedoc #5 - A memoir in Chapters

The Corbières & Lagrasse

My first ever visit to Languedoc was about thirty years ago. It was a family holiday with my late husband and our children and we’d rented a cottage in the depths of the wild and rugged Corbières for two-weeks. We were attracted to Languedoc because it would satisfy our children’s enjoyment of swimming in the sea and our love of France and its ancient buildings. Plus because wine was one of my husband’s passions he was interested in what was happening in the then ‘up-and-coming’ Languedoc wine region.

It took a few days to drive south from our home in Warwickshire, and it wasn’t until late afternoon on the third day with the children fast asleep on the back seat, that we pulled up in the village of Lagrasse close to our final destination. We had food in the cool box, but we needed bread and hoped to pick up a bottle of wine too. We’d stopped the car at the top of a promenade of plain trees shading a long straggly row of ancient stone buildings. In amongst them the boulangerie was sadly closed but a little restaurant next door seemed busy so John went inside to see if they could help.

I rolled the windows down to take a deep breath of fresh air. It was a sultry July evening, the cicadas (cigales in this part of France) were chirping, the sun was dipping low and the sound of gentle jazz music wafted from the restaurant along with the smell of garlicy cuisine. It was all so relaxing and I immediately felt the stress of the journey melt away. In its place came a strong feeling that I’d arrived in a place that had been waiting for me all my life.

It’s strange how we are sometimes given glimpses into your future without knowing it. That holiday above all others, is imprinted in my memory and as I write this I poignantly remember how I felt the next time I drove into that village many years later. This time I was on my own, John had died a few years earlier and I was overwhelmed by the sharp focused memories that came slamming back in full technicolour. I remembered how much he’d loved Languedoc and had used to muse about coming here to start a wine tour business when he retired and here I was doing it in his memory.

I knew, of course, that I had to create a tour that included Lagrasse. Not only is it close to my heart, but also because the Corbières produces some of the best wine in the region.

As always, the creation of a tour begins with getting to know the most picturesque routes to villages and wineries, so I spent a lot of time just driving Fifi around getting to know the place. I wanted the lunch stop to be in Lagrasse and again fate had a hand in that. I was drawn to the place where John had bought the bread and wine all those years back and found it was now owned by a beautiful and highly talented woman called Elspeth. She ran her busy restaurant with aplomb and always with a smile on her face, placing plates in front of us heaped with delicious food especially the fruit tarts that we all tucked into so greedily.

The Corbières is the largest vineyard district in Languedoc and contains at least three distinct areas; mountainous, coastal and plains. Some of the mountains are in the crumple zone of the Pyrenees where you find almost every soil type. Then, stretching westwards and inland the soils are mainly limestone and clay but there is also sand and alluvial. The climate is hot, dry and often windy but where there is altitude the growing conditions are less hostile. All this is to say that the wines made here reflect the vines struggle against nature, resulting in hearty, rugged wines much like the land and its people.

As you drive around, you’ll come across signs telling you which terroir you are passing through. There are eleven altogether but in recent years there’s been an initiative to classify the main ones which are Les Terraces des Lézignan, Montagne Alaric, Terroir de Lagrasse, Corbières-Durban and Port Mahon. There is also the Boutenac which is currently the only one to attain cru status which it did back in 2005. That’s where I headed first to find a winery for my tour.

I came across Chateau Ollieux-Romanis which has a long history, an interesting story and produces top class wines; everything I wanted for my Corbières & Lagrasse tour.

Their story begins about a couple of hundred years ago when the owner at that time had two daughters and no sons. Thanks to Napoleon’s inheritance laws, a father must leave his estate in equal shares to his children, no matter if they are daughters or sons. Very fair indeed.

On this occasion when the father died, his daughters had each married and didn’t want to share the chateau or its winery so they divided the land and the buildings into two. To be sure each half of the property was seen as separate entities, they named one Château Ollieux and the other Château Romanis, and for good measure painted the shutters and doors different colours. Green for Château Ollieux and a deep claret for Château Romanis.

All proceeded happily until those sisters passed and other members of each side of the family inherited and gradually both sides became distant from each other. I have the feeling that a family rift had somehow formed but those intimate details were never shared with me. However, somewhere along the line Château Romanis stopped wine production and the buildings were no longer used. Ollieux was still thriving when I made my first visit. It was owned by a strong and rather terrifying woman called Madam Borie.

She had three children and at that time her only son lived in Paris with his beautiful wife and children and working in the financial world. Although he was born in the Corbières I don’t think returning was part of his plan, that is until his formidable mother decided she must retire. Her daughters were happy to do some work at the winery but they didn’t want to run it, so she called Pierre. I wish I had been the fly in the wall when he put the phone down after that conversation and turned to his chic wife to tell her he was leaving the world of expensive city living and swapping it for the life of a farmer.

Shrewd Madam Borie had been right though; it was a good move to call him back to his roots. Pierre brought his business brain to the rather ramshackle domaine and set about making big changes. One of the first things he did was buy the winery with the deep claret doors, rejoining once more Ollieux to Romanis which Pierre told me was the thing he was most proud of. And so he should be, Château Ollieux-Romanis is one of the leading lights in the Corbières these days.

My Corbières & Lagrasse wine tour went through various guises over the years but always followed the model of two wineries, lunch in Lagrasse and something cultural or foodie. Château Ollieux-Romanis was invariably the morning visit and Elspeth’s restaurant was where we ate lunch, that is until she sold it. I was devastated. I tried others and we did have lovely meals elsewhere in Lagrasse, but nothing could hold a candle to Elspeth’s cooking.

In the season of 2012, I arrived in Languedoc on April 1st as usual and was walking through Carcassonne when I bumped into Elspeth and I told her how much we missed her cooking. She invited me over to her home in Lagrasse and cooked me a fine lunch and explained that although she was supposed to be retired she was now running a B&B. From what I could gather she was just as busy as ever, especially as she often cooked dinner for her guests. They would eat her sumptuous food around the long kitchen table where I was sitting and it was then that I had a lightbulb moment. How would she feel about cooking private lunches for my clients? She instantly agreed and for the next several years that’s what we did. It was so special taking my clients to Elspeth’s lovely home knowing she had shopped, prepared and cooked the delicious lunch just for us.

The Corbières and Lagrasse tour became one of my most popular tours and because year on year I had many returning clients I knew I had to keep designing more. I vowed I’d do that when I returned in 2013. I also decided the time had come to look for a permanent home in Languedoc. My business was thriving and at last I was happy again. I knew the time had come to sell up in England and move permanently to La Belle France.