A brief history of the Côtes de Thongue region
How it started
The idea of wines labelled from the Côtes de Thongue came out of a crisis.
For the first half of the Twentieth Century, wine from the Languedoc had been inextricably linked with wine from Algeria. The Languedoc provided the bulk from high yielding, minimally flavoured carignan and aramon; the wine grown in Algeria provided the strength. You mixed them together and sold it in industrial quantities to the rest of France. But with France’s departure from Algeria, and the breaking of economic links, the model just fell apart. One of the early pioneers of the region, Jacques Boyer (at Domaine la Croix Belle) remembers it thus:
“It was almost apocalyptic in the Seventies. ‘Midi Libre’ [the local newspaper] had headlines like, ‘There will be no Languedoc wine in five years’ time.’ There were huge problems with wine. My father encouraged me to avoid it; he thought that making wine here was a busted flush.
The creation of Vin de Pays de Côtes de Thongue
“But I had always wanted to be a vigneron. Even when I was small, I would get my grandmother to explain how they made things in the vineyard. I wanted to be a vigneron, but I didn’t want to do it like the vignerons I had grown up with; I wanted to make wine that was a pleasure to drink.”
When Jacques Boyer took the domaine over from his father in 1979, the problem came with trying to sell it.
“When I went to the markets with my wine,” he remembers, “once they saw it was from the Languedoc, they wouldn’t even taste it.
“It became clear that I somehow had to distinguish my wines, so they weren’t just dismissed along with the rest of the Languedoc. I wanted wines from this area to be quality wines, and there were other vignerons who thought like me. Not everyone; initially, the President of the local Cave Cooperative was opposed, but eventually he could see that the tide was flowing in this direction. At a local assembly of winemakers, he lifted up my hand and said, ‘This is the new president of the syndicat of Côtes de Thongue wine makers.”
(The Thongue itself is a pretty insignificant river; it certainly doesn’t dominate the area like the Rhone or the Loire; rather, the crucial thing about its name was just that it wasn’t merely ‘the Languedoc’.) The first wine he bottled with a Vin de Pays de Côtes de Thongue label was in 1984.
“When I went to the markets to show my wines, once they saw it was from the Languedoc, they wouldn’t even taste it.”
— Jacques Boyer, Domaine de la Croix Belle, the first president of the syndicat of the Côtes de Thongue wine makers, describing the situation in the late Seventies.
The great change
Michel Cros, the elder statesman of Domaine Saint Georges d’Ibry, shares the memory.
“Yes, Jacques was the boss. But there was a small group of us who shared a mentality of wanting to deliver quality. Two things also revolutionised things in the Eighties. The first was that we started to use grapes better suited to our terroir. The second was that we introduced heating control into the cellar, so we could keep it cool; that was the single biggest thing. Before, on a hot summer afternoon, the fermentation would go crazy. You had to get that temperature under control. But after that, quality could happen.”
There was one other crucial aspect in their favour, though it remains controversial. The Côtes de Thongue stayed outside the AOP system (then known as AOC). Virtually all of France’s best wine comes from land marked out as good for wine making, and it is given an Appellation according to that area: AOP Pauillac, AOP Volnay or whatever. But with the AOP system comes regulation; in particular, regulation as to what grapes you need to use and in what proportion.
A good comparison comes with Faugeres just to the north. It became an AOC in 1982 but the only permitted grapes were and are carignan, cinsault, grenache, mourvedre and syrah. The wines from there are good but they come with limitations; they are essentially variations of the same wine. How would cabernet sauvignon work out here? Or marselan or malbec? No one will ever know. On the other hand, in the Côtes de Thongue, virtually everything is allowed. That means the possibilities are endless.
Without being in the appellation system, the wines superficially lack prestige, but these vignerons have a freedom of expression unmatched in the rest of France, and thanks to a strong shared mentality about producing a quality product, their results are both good, and endlessly innovative.
Boyer and Cros are still working, but the engine room of the Côtes de Thongue is now with the next generation. The Presidents of the syndicat are Francois Tesserenc and Francois Delhon of Domaine de l’Arjolle and Domaine de Bassac respectively. In both cases, their father was one of the initial pioneers in the Eighties, and now they as the sons are driving the Côtes de Thongue designation forward with some frankly brilliant wines.
And there are no limits to what happens now. Orange wine? Natural wine? Dealcoholised wine? It’s all here. But you’ll also fine classically made wine, both from traditional assemblages, but also from grape combinations you’ve never tried before.
Some of the spirit is summed up for me by a young vigneron, Joel Larose, of the minute Domaine Larose in Alignan du Vent, who has started making a vermentino-muscat blend, called “Fach a l’ostal Blanc”:
“I had this muscat, but people were saying it was too heavy, so I thought I’d add some vermentino, to cut through it.”
It is good, but it is probably not the best wine: to be honest, it’s not even his best wine, but the point is that he has is the freedom to experiment, to try out a new assemblage.
Wine in France is great, but the danger is that it can be static; reproducing classic tastes, year after year. And that has its place. But thank God for the Côtes de Thongue, which is an engine room of innovation in a deeply traditional country. I am convinced that the future classics of French wine will be discovered here. Use this website to discover more.