Languedoc - the wild wild wild South of France
In the world of general wine consuming public, hardly anyone ever heard of Languedoc . But of course, people in the wine circles have long recognized this biggest wine producing region in France (often grouped together with its southwesterly neighbor into the Languedoc-Roussillon wine region) as something of a curiosity due to the incredible amount of diverse wines that come out of that area, many very very good, and most very cheap and deep under the radar of the average wine drinker. I think there a couple of primary reasons for this: Lack of a global marketing machine - unlike Bordeaux or Burgundy, Languedoc has never been marketed as serious wine region and thus most consumers never heard of it. Situated in the south of France, with Roussillon to the left and Southern Rhone and Provence to the right, there is a lot more cheap land in Languedoc that perhaps in any other regions in France, so production volume is large, and that keeps prices low even for high-quality wines. Low pr...