Maxime Barrière
What comes to your mind when you think of wines from the hot south of France? deep reds, fruity, strong and heavy.
The more we visit wineries and try local wines, the more we are surprised by the diversity of the products.
We (my husband and I) love planning our trips also according to restaurants or wineries that we’d like to visit. We often drive through the Bourgogne and Beaujolais after a few nights in the Baden-Württemberg area, where my better half is from.
As my parents decided to leave Brittany to move down to Pyrenées Orientales, it was a bit of choc.
3 years have passed and we still discover this beautiful region.
In the summer 2024, we tasted the Rouge Tomette, a wine from Maxime Barrière, at the restaurant “Le petit chez soi” (the small at home), where they serve local wines.
In the region, you drink red wines cooled, which makes total sense since it gets is very hot, I do it too in Berlin when the summer hits the city, like it’s been the case since a few weeks. And so, I enjoyed a Rouge Tomette for an apéritif. I have been waiting to drink one of his bottle and write about him, as promised.
The Rouge Tomette is a perfect summer red wine, drink it at 16°c as an apéritif, with cheese or with a main course, grilled meat with vegetables, it is fruity and “lighter” in texture (82% Carignan, 18% syrah) than some other wines of the region. Another positiv point of the wines there, is that because the weather is so dry and hot, they do not need to spray their grapes often, only a few times a year, he said, nothing compared to Bordeaux…..
So we went to visit him on the Domaine in Baixas. He welcomed us as if we met years ago, friendly and opened, we stayed there for a while and left with boxes of the Rouge Tomette, le Rouge Baie and the Rouge de Falun, which are a bit more complex, some delicious olive oil and his apricot juice, which is delicious.
Maxime joined this father 12 years ago and started making his own wine 4 years ago. He has now created 5 wines, 4 reds and his first white wine. For some of the wineries, they got this year about 40% less yield as the previous year. So that, when it comes to agriculture, they have to adjust to the climate change and prefer olive trees for example to fruity ones. He produces his own olive oil, which pretty delicious, so that I do not have a bottle anymore to show you since we finished it very fast.
The heat doesn’t stop them from celebrating and Maxime hosts regularly gatherings around food and wine at the Domaine. Follow him on Instagram.
