ROBERT & BERNARD PLAGEOLES

GAILLAC

“The Plageoles put Gaillac – and it’s local grapes – on the map.”  Jacqueline Friedrich, The Wine Of France

“The wines of this unique Gaillac domaine… are a challenge; nothing quite like them is produced anywhere else in France… In many ways [the Plageoles wines] are untypical of Gaillac – yet Gaillaica is an AOC with so many personalities that they seem perversely typical, too.” Andrew Jefford, The New France

After a night of wine revelry with Gilles Lapalus of Sutton Grange in his home town of Cluny (Burgundy), Rob’s twitter updates fell silent on the 10th of July. It wasn’t until 18 days later that he resurfaced with the following tweet: “Getting out on Gaillac. Great wines from the Plageoles lads made with indigenous varieties most of us have never heard of. Definitely bringing these in because a: they're delicious and great value b: we’ve got no Gaillac and c: that will make two wines with 'nature' on the label!” Somewhere in those 18 days Rob had gone to ground, ventured off-piste and surfaced amongst the hidden vineyards of South West France.
Viticultural Gaillac is a horseshoe arc of land high above the river Tarn in South West France. Though relatively close to Bordeaux, few people outside of South Western France know this region’s wines. It was the Phoenicians, then the Romans who first planted vines in the Gaillac region northeast of Toulouse. It predates Bordeaux, and like Cahors, Madiran and other wine regions in South Western France it might have achieved the same renown had it not been for a quirk of historical fate. If only those shifty Bordelaise on the Garonne River had not first expropriated their wine (by blending it with their own) and later taxed it to death before it went through their port. Then Phylloxera vastatrix came to town, which pretty much delivered the coup de grâce to Gaillac.
Today’s Gaillac is many things to many people. To the wine buyers from British supermarkets it’s simply a cheap, inoffensive refreshing, fruity white or rose from the local Mauzac Blanc or Gris. In France, outside Gaillac, it’s a robust, aromatic red made from a blend of local and interloper varieties to wash down a simple plat de jour. To the esoteric sommelier, the source of some compelling regional oddities and yet for Robert Plageoles it’s a fanatical, lifelong passion. Robert Plageoles also seems to be many things to many people. To wine lovers he is the most famous and widely admired grower in Gaillac, to the Gaillac faithful he is an iconoclastic ampelographer (an expert in the identification and classification of grapevines), who has indelibly linked this family to Gaillac wine and almost solely responsible for resuscitating Gaillac’s indigenous, almost extinct grape varieties. To the Galliac AOC committee he is probably viewed as a hopeless anachronism or wine outlaw. 

The Plageoles have managed to recapture some of the historic recognition that Gaillac wines had in the past. They’ve also brought back from oblivion many of its distinctive grape varieties. Robert researched and replanted over a dozen varietals (7 in the Mauzac family alone) indigenous to Gaillac that had all but vanished – for example grafting and growing Prunelart (for red wine), five variations of the Mauzac grape (Roux, Vert, Noir, Gris and Rose), and Verdanel and Ondenc (for whites), and in doing so is responsible for bringing these rare flavors into the 21st century. Bernard took over Domaine Plageoles around 10 years ago. He shares his father’s love for Gaillac, its native grape varieties, organic viticulture, and low-tech, natural-yeast wine-making. Rather than blending their wines, they’ve chosen to bottle each wine as a single variety putting them at odds with the AOC, but also allowing them to market the distinctiveness of the Gaillac grape varieties. Most of the wines are therefore bottled under the Vin de Pays des Côtes Du Tarn AOC.