Joe’s Featured Wine: Jadix Picpoul de Pinet, Languedoc, France AOC 2015

$11.99 at Crush Wine & Spirits in Bryant, Arkansas (AR)

100% Picpoul de Pinet, also known as Jadix.

Intense aromas of citrus and exotic fruits.  Fresh taste with good acidity and a slight sea saltiness.

Picpoul de Pinet is a lesser known white grape produced in the Languedoc in southern France.  The grape and region’s history goes far to 118 BC when the Domitian Way – a road from Spain to Italy – ran through the vineyards.  The “Piquepoul” grape was recognized as having the ability to produce quality wines back in the 16^th century.  Picpoul de Pinet received AOC recognition in 1985.  Picpoul means “strings the lips” due to its high acidity.

This wine is produced by the Aquitaine Wine Company that is owned by Jean-Christophe Calvet and his wife Margaret.  He is the sixth generation of his family to work in the wine business.  Jean-Christophe comes from a long line of wine merchants dating back to the early 19^th century when his great, great, great grandfather began the family business in southern France with offices in the Rhone Valley and Bordeaux.  Calvet et Cie, later to be known as Maison Calvet, continued to grow for a century and a half becoming one of the dominant negociants with a worldwide market. 

Jean-Christophe started working for the family business in 1981, but his father and uncle, Jean and Hubert, sold the business a year later.  Jean-Christophe stayed with Maison Calvet until 1984 when he left to work in the wine business for other companies in New York, South America, and Ireland.  In 1998, he and Margaret returned to France to start their own company in the same area where Maison Calvet was formed.  In 2002, they launched Aquitaine Wine Company in Bordeaux.  Today the company exports wine to 47 states in the US, United Kingdom, and Asia.