Mas Amel is located a bit north west of Perpignan and like most Domaines Mas Amiel is up a windy dirt track through there vines but the buildings at the end are clearly organised and spotless.
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Now I defiantly like Port and I also like desert wines and unfortunately I was driving so self control needed to be handed out in massive doses and I needed to be selective so the two things I tried was the Vintage 1969 Mas Amiel and the Vintage Blanc 2023
The Vintage 69 is certainly fortified but it's not vintage port it's filtered and very smooth I'd drink this with cheese, the smells ozzing from it are simply gorgeous and that carries on as you taste the wine. Now the odd part here is that in the winemaking process it's matured for a year outside in demijohns under the sun, when you walk around the rows of demijohns it really is an odd thing most of them have the nicest colour liquid in them but for a few of them the process has clearly gone wrong.
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The wine then moves to some 350 year old oak casks where it slowly evolves until it's eventually bottled.
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The Vintage Blanc is just delicious,
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it's 100% grenache gris and it's made in the stainless steel vats that they have and then halfway through the process they mix in more alcohol just to make sure. It's a joy to taste and is just crying out to be paired with all the usual food suspects. It's full of citrus but by no means over powering.
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The stainless vats are just visible on the left, on the right are the 'new' concrete vats as opposed to the old ones in the main cellar.
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Both of these and a lot of the rest of the range are available from Vinatis
The staff at the buying room are really friendly and whilst they offer all sorts of tasting options that you can buy we just turned up and they basically said what would you like to try. Several euros later we had bottles to take away and then a tour round the process plant and site including the odd demijohns.
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If your passing by I can confirm Alex's view that the place is well worth a visit ...
and worth the effort