Fitou

Fitou is a red wine from the south of France. It is one of the finer southern French wines and is named after the village of Fitou.

Fitou was the first red wine in the Languedoc to be recognised as a wine of quality and obtain AOC status in 1948. It covers an area of production of 2,500ha of vines, producing 100,000hl (13.3million bottles) of wine with an average of 40hl per hectare, the lowest yield of the Languedoc AOC.

The name Fitou itself gives a good idea of the uniqueness of the appellation, for it comes from the Latin word fita, which means border or limit. In fact, only nine villages from two separate areas have the right to make Fitou. The villages of Fitou, Caves, Treilles, La Palme and Leucate on the Mediterranean coast, and Paziols, Tuchan, Villeneuve and Cascastel in the mountainous area a few kilometres further inland. Fitou is made of a blend of mainly Carignan and Grenache, balanced with Syrah in the inland area of Fitou and Mourvèdre in the coastal area of Fitou.

History

As early as the 16th and 17th century, Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV appreciated the wines of Fitou. However achieving Appellation status was a long and hard road for the people of the region.

After the 1907 wine crisis, the first Caves Coopératives, that had been created to overcome sales problems, faced hard times in the 1920s. Sales were still poor and producers found themselves selling in bulk mostly to wine merchants from Bordeaux to improve their own produce. Thus the wines of Fitou were know for their quality amongst wine experts, but not recognised as such by the general public because it had no label to its name.

With the creation of the AOC in 1936, the nine villages of Fitou saw the opportunity for the quality of their wine to be acknowledged. As soon as 1936, their sweet Vins Doux Naturels gained AOC status under Cotes d’Agly, the battle had begun. At first, people from the five coastal villages regrouped under the Defence Comity for the wines of Fitou and soon, after the war, they came together with their counterparts of the mountain villages, who had advocated a Cotes du Tauch label, in a common bid to obtain a red wine appellation.

In 1947, a delegation from the newly created Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO) was invited to investigate the case for an Appellation Fitou. The quality of the wine, the long lasting tradition and the defined area of production, all satisfied the delegation and on 28th April 1948 a decree made the birth of Fitou official.

The story of Fitou is one of human endeavour, born of the desire of a few obstinate men to leave their successors with a lasting legacy. It’s the growers of Fitou, who built upon the naturally rugged landscape to refine their wine and developed traditional grape varieties like Carignan to its best. In order to uphold the wine’s identity, a minimum of 30% of Carignan is required to make Fitou. Indeed, over the last twenty years in many parts of Languedoc, the Syrah grape has become an increasingly large part of the blend. Mont Tauch, while modernising its vineyards, has reserved some of its best patches for Carignan; thus achieving the perfect marriage between modernity and tradition.