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- Advice about Port Leucate area
Am visiting the Fitou / leucate area very shortly & am interested in sweetish wines for drinking in the afternoons & evenings, nothing to heavy and at a sensible price. Names of hotels or restraunts that serve them would be helpfull.
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61 - Reply by po54, Sep 1.
Not very original see: http://www.leucate.net/ The website of the Tourisme office.
You are close to good wine areas : Fitou, Maury, Corbières, Banyuls,...
Do you have the Michelin guide ? or The Guide du Routard for Languedoc Roussilon ? http://www.routard.com/guide/code_dest/languedoc_roussillon.htm
You need to go to Mas Amiel in Maury, one very good Maury sweet wine
http://www.masamiel.fr/
You can have a look to that site also : http://www.vigneronsdemaury.com/
See Domaine Cazes : in Rivesaltes : http://www.cazes-rivesaltes.com/
The great Domaine Parcé in Bages
I'm looking for more infos...
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1139 - Reply by dmcker, Sep 1.
I did once have the Domaine Cazes version of a vin doux naturel, their Cuvee Aime Cazes. Very different from a port or sherry, and a delicious eye opener to a new wine experience. So many fruits and spices all at once on the palate. Languedoc-Roussillon has surprised me many times with its differences in wine from what I first encountered in Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire and then the Rhone...
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61
- Reply by po54, Sep 2.
Those wines, Vins doux naturels (Sweet natural wines ?) are really delicious, and superb when they're old (20, 30, 40, 50 years old: a sweet concentrate of roasted nuts, dried fruits and figs, apricot, honney, tabacco, chocolate, aromas of old brandy,... Fantastic with a chocolate cake or foie gras, for ex.
Thse wines are processed that way : the alcoholic fermentation of the wine is stopped by addition of neutral wine alcohol. Then those wines are put in glass "bonbonnes" ( large 50 l bottles) in open air for one year. The thermical shocks between summer and winter gives the wine an oxydation. after that year, the wine is put in oak barrel pour 5, 10, 20,... years.
You can have a look to a movie on Mas Amiel website : http://www.masamiel.fr/
