Picpoul de Pinet

Astonishingly popular with UK wine lovers, this southern French white has cornered the market for a number of reasons. Andrew Jefford analyses the secrets of its success

57 wines tasted Its clean, fresh style is finding great favour in the UK. Great pricing and our judges’ high scores reveal why

Back at Christmas, we took my 89-year-old Dad for a pub dinner. He can’t stay up late or move far, and we’d just been to visit my Mum in her nursing home, so the pub was chosen for nothing save proximity and convenience. It had one or two wines by the glass. Leading them off, in pride of place, in deepest mid-winter Oxfordshire... was Picpoul de Pinet.

This strange encounter underlines a most unlikely success story. Over the last decade, Picpoul de Pinet has been a smash hit with Britons, to the extent that today the UK accounts for a third of total Picpoul de Pinet sales. Why? How? What is this winning wine and where does it come from?

The clay-limestone soils of the appellation zone occupy 1,500ha close to the Etang de Thau: the coastal lagoon lying between Frontignan and Agde, dominated by Sète’s Mont St-Clair. It’s one of the oldest of France’s winegrowing regions, dating back to the pre-Christian times of Greek settlement; a Gallo-Roman villa on the shores of the Etang contained presses, amphorae and a wine cellar. The first mention of ‘Piquepoul’, though, came later, in the 17th century. It was one of the three white grape varieties (together with Clairette and Terret) used for once hugely popular vermouth; indeed Noilly Prat, still made at Marseillan on the Etang de Thau, is based on 60% Picpoul. The appellation had modest origins (VDQS from 1954; Coteaux du Languedoc from 1985); there were just 15,000hl produced in 1992. Now production has quadrupled. The zone finally won its own AOP in 2013.

Why the success? It’s a cooperative-dominated region (the co-ops account for an impressive 82% of production) and is almost entirely machine-harvested, so its cost price is low, and large UK retailers and merchants can work successfully in partnership arrangements.

Recent technical advances in white-winemaking (especially high-quality pressing; cold, reductive fermentation with some lees contact; a blocked malo and bottling under inert gas) have sent quality soaring. It has an easy-to-pronounce name – and it isn’t yet more Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc; this ‘southern oyster wine’ (90% of French Mediterranean oysters come from the Bassin de Thau) has both gastronomic and terroir kudos. Most importantly, its flavour style – fresh and lemony but not bitingly acid, with 12.5% or 13% alcohol and a saline edge – is hugely likeable.

Its success, though, is also due to a cunning ploy by local producers – to exclude Picpoul wherever possible from the variety pool of local IGP and other AOP wines (it’s long been allowed for white Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but is little-grown there). If you want Picpoul, in other words, it has to be ‘de Pinet’. And we do.

‘Picpoul’s flavour style – fresh and lemony but not bitingly acid – is hugely likeable’