Heroes of the Hérault

Mas de Daumas Gassac has been the most celebrated domaine in Languedoc over the past half-century. Its genesis can be dated back to a solitary walk around the property taken by Bordeaux geology professor Henri Enjalbert in July 1971. Returning to the mas [farmhouse], he declared to the astonished owners that they might produce ‘a grand cru from this soil – though it may be 200 years before it is accepted as such’.

Those owners were former glovemaker Aimé Guibert and his wife, a university ethnologist called Véronique de la Vaissière; they had bought the property the previous year. Aimé Guibert seized on the words – and greatly accelerated the time frame.

Seven years later, the first vintage (1978) of the Cabernet Sauvignon-based Mas de Daumas Gassac was launched, made with a little sage consultative help from Bordeaux oenology professor Emile Peynaud. At first, silence. In 1981, journalist Michel Piot – and subsequently, by French restaurant guide as ‘Château Lafite du Languedoc’.