Domaine La Tasque
Meeting with my fellow Master of Wine, Juliet Bruce-Jones, who is one of a handful of wine growers pioneering Assyrtiko in the Languedoc. Juliet and her husband Simon run a small wine estate in the village of Mailhac on the western edge of the Minervois. Their very first vintage was 2014. They planted Assyrtiko in 2020, in two vineyards outside the village, totalling just 60 ares. T he vines are planted with trellising and look quite unlike the vines of Santorini. They also have Bourboulenc, Carignan Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Cinsault, and unusually Tempranillo, as well as Syrah, Mourvèdre, Grenache Gris and some old Carignan. 2026 has been a good vintage for them, with their bigger quantity ever of Assyrtiko, and very healthy grapes. We went to look at the vineyards, taking a winding windy track out of the village. The vines came from a nursery in Nemea in the Peloponnese in southern Greece. French bureaucracy was surprisingly...
