Les Vignes de L'Église

The Vignes de l'Église wines are made exclusively for Liberty Wines by Matt Thomson and Marguerite Vasseur at the Cave de Pomérols co-operative in Picpoul de Pinet. Influenced by breezes off the Mediterranean, the country around Pomérols is noticeably cooler than most of the Languedoc, which is the whole reason the appellation exists where it does.

Picpoul is an old variety whose name means lip-stinger, a fair description of its natural acidity. It is one of very few white grapes that holds acidity reliably in a hot southern climate, which is why it survived here when almost everything else planted on the coastal plain was pulled up or turned into bulk wine. The appellation sits beside the Étang de Thau, the lagoon that produces most of France's oysters, and the pairing of the two is not a marketing invention but a matter of geography.

Matt Thomson is a New Zealander with a long record in Marlborough and a reputation for precision in white winemaking; working through a co-operative gives access to fruit from a wide spread of growers without owning any of it. The wines are protected from oxygen, fermented cool and bottled early, which is the correct treatment for a grape whose appeal is its cut.