Le Paria

​Winemakers Stephanie & Olivier Ramé, a husband and wife team, are the third generation of their family to run the show at Maison Ventenac. Their vineyards are in Cabardès, the only Languedoc appellation that allows both Atlantic and Mediterranean grape varieties, so offering a unique exploration of flavors. The village is famed for its limestone, chalky soils, which they say gives their wines their saline & fresh characters. The winemaking philosophy is to allow their unique terroir to shine through in the wines, presenting them as naturally as possible and raising in tuns, terra cotta urns and concrete vats to enhance their purity.

A lovely fragrant nose of wild cherries, violets and pomegranate. Cured game and raspberries on the nose. But then when taking a sip, your whole mouth fills with peppercorns. It almost distracts from the rather scrumptious, gleeful plum and raspberry wine-gums fruitiness. Again a wine you could chill and just vacuum up with a barbecue. This ends up with a trace of ink dust and crumbled dried rosemary on the finish.