Southern exposure

Anne Gros is one of the most respected, and most fortunate, wine producers in the world. As an only child she inherited all of her father François’ three hectares of prime Côte d’Or vineyard land around the most bejewelled village in Burgundy, Vosne-Romanée, and has been running it with aplomb since the age of 22. When only 25 she expanded Domaine Anne Gros to 6.5 ha. She then went on to build a new winery – quite unlike the traditional underground cellars of her neighbours – and converted an outbuilding into a stylish modern guesthouse, La Colombière. Most important, she makes extremely good wine. Her Clos Vougeot was my favourite in the blind tasting of 56 2008s I reported on recently.

Now she has done something apparently crazy: established an entirely new domaine in arguably France’s most challenging wine region, the Languedoc, where local growers are being bribed to pull up their vines, so great is the surplus of cheap wine being produced there.

The new domaine carries not just her name but that of the father of her three teenage children, Jean-Paul Tollot of Tollot-Beaut, another well-regarded Burgundian domaine. And the two are on a mad cycle of constantly overseeing their cellars and vineyards in both Burgundy and Minervois in Languedoc. She drives the five hours to Languedoc every two or three weeks; he visits more often during the harvest which, unfortunately, usually coincides with the vintage in Burgundy.

I put the obvious interrogative word to Gros. “Because I’d turned 40 and needed a new challenge,” she replied. “And because Jean-Paul and I had all this experience but had never worked together.” They considered a Provençal property but it was “too bourgeois”. And while the Languedoc is awash with pretty 19th-century houses, they decided to build an ecologically respectable house from scratch.

This is why Les Cazelles, a tiny hamlet on the north-eastern border of the Minervois appellation – average age of humans 60, average age of vines probably not much less – now has an extraordinary bright orange, baked earth, metal and wooden building on the brow of a hill overlooking the Montagne Noire.

On the first floor is a minimalist living area equipped with full electronic teenage support systems while below is probably the single most lavish winery in Languedoc-Roussillon. I have never seen so many top quality Burgundy barrels in this area. They even put the delicate wine produced by the Cinsault grape into 100 per cent new oak in their first vintage, 2008. The wines do taste eerily Burgundian.

I tasted only the 2008s, which may naturally have been rather higher in acidity than most vintages in the Languedoc. But all were distinctive, with none of the more usual density or rusticity. Admittedly, Les Cazelles is one of the highest villages in Minervois, at 220m – “like Vosne-Romanée”, as Gros points out on her website www.anne-gros.com. Even midsummer nights here are cool and the winters are savage. On a day that was blisteringly hot in the Aude valley whence I’d come, she met me wearing a fleece, although soon stripped off as we toured Gros’ and Tollot’s 8.5 hectares of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and 104-year-old Carignan vines.

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Their vines are dotted around the village in almost as many parcels as they own in the Côte d’Or, and they have decided, Burgundy style, to group them into three terroirs and three different blends of the four varieties they grow. Les Fontanilles is the freshest, fruitiest and arguably most Burgundian, from north-facing plots on mainly the flaky grey sediments known as grès. La Ciaude comes from hotter terrain with some clay and limestone, and incorporates the produce of the tree-like 104-year-old Carignan vines. Les Carrétals comes from just one hectare of vines that celebrated their centenary last year. It tastes exotic and intense and carries its oaky burden with the most ease.

And then there is 50/50, an unoaked cocktail of fruit and acidity that reminded me of nothing more than a young bourgogne rouge. The name reflects the ownership of the domaine (the Credit Agricole is not mentioned, though probably should be) rather than the assemblage. It has to be sold as a vin de table because it contains a higher proportion of Carignan than is sanctioned by the Minervois appellation regulations.

Gros keeps the stock in Burgundy and assures me that the wines have done well in blind tastings there with red burgundies. But it seems that however sought-after Gros burgundies are (the average price for her 2005s is £250 a bottle), the Languedoc wines have been a tough sell. “The Tollot-Beaut clients are not at all interested,” she told me, “and the UK market has been disappointing. The best is restaurants in France, especially outside Paris.” The wines are sold in the UK, however, (£12.95- £26.75 at Lea & Sandeman), the US, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Australia. They have so far sold half of the 60,000 bottles of 2008. The 2009s are not yet bottled. There is clearly work to be done.

Gros and Tollot are not the first Burgundians to be tempted by this seductively wild landscape. Ten years ago talented Jean-Marie Fourrier of Gevrey-Chambertin bought a property in Faugères, two appellations east of Les Cazelles. I loved his 2001 but by 2005 the bank was so unimpressed by his performance that he couldn’t afford to bottle his 2003 and 2004 and had to sell them off in bulk while the property was put back on the market.

I asked Gros whether she had discussed her new enterprise with Fourrier but she told me she hadn’t, nor tasted his Languedoc wines – in fact she didn’t even know his burgundies.

For tasting notes, see www.jancisrobinson.com

More columns at www.ft.com/robinson