Return in favor of Muscat de Noel

At the beginning of December, producers and sellers in Roussillon are on hot coals. This year it’s all about timing the bottling of Muscat de Noël as accurately as possible, a wine of exceptional quality, erected as a new tradition in the Catalan country and the perfect gift, affordable for every budget (from €9.40 to €9.40). 13.50).

“We just restarted bottling. We are careful. In 2021, the week before Christmas, we ran out of stock and, as you can imagine, there was demand. It was too late to bottle…” explains Emeline Picard, marketing manager for Dom Brial, one of the two giants, along with the cellar of Arnaud de Villeneuve, Muscat’s great Christmas offensive.

“We foresaw a lot. Our Muscat bottles, two different references, have been offered by our sales representatives since July. And Christmas Muscat has become a very attractive product in many other regions of France: Brittany, Ile-de-France, East, Auvergne. It’s for sale at CHR (cafe-hotel-catering) but especially among vintners. He even became a loss leader for them. For a wine merchant, the lack of wine drives customers to despair! explains Jean-Pierre Papi, CEO of the Arnaud de Villeneuve cooperative based in Rivesaltes (Oriental Pyrenees).

Breaking down the outdated image of natural sweet wine

This year, the winery is throwing into the fray 80,000 bottles already on display in stores and at Christmas markets, and eye-catching new bottles that give this naturally sweet wine a festive and luxurious touch. Such is the case with Arnaud de Villeneuve, Dom Brial with its sumptuous bottle signed by Saveur Glass, and the Lafage estate in Perpignan with its hypnotic Muscat de Noël Blanc.

Because, as you understand, we are talking about finally breaking the outdated image of natural sweet wine, putting forward a sweet wine that should crunch with freshly harvested grapes. “Marketing is clearly on the rise again this year. In 2021, at the end of the Covid period, we were unable to meet very high demand. We will definitely sell over 500,000 bottles instead of 400,000 a year ago. Between 2015 and 2017 we set a record of 530,000 bottles, followed immediately by a period of commercial decline. But today we feel a renewed desire to celebrate Christmas with Muscat,” says Anne-Laure Pellet, director of the Roussillon Interprofessional Wine Council.

As a result, very good results for professionals in the sector. “Muscat de Noel now represents half of our packaged natural sweet wines. It is made from Muscat Petitgrain and Muscat d’Alexandry, which represent more than 620 hectares of vineyards dedicated to natural sweet wines from our 2,000 hectares of producers,” says Agnès Alquier, Director of Production at Dom Brian.

A tradition revived by three winemakers

Muscat de Noël is the product of a very old tradition, forgotten and then miraculously revived in November 1997. On this day of gray weather and low skies, three tenors of natural sweet wines, Francis Baixas, Yves Zieu and Pierre-Henri de la Fabregue, well-fed, sitting in the Domaine de Rombeau restaurant, lamenting, tasting the new Muscat cuvée, so tasty, but which will be put on display for sale only in March next year to meet administrative regulations.

They then promptly launched a procedure at Inao (National Institute for Appellations of Origin). They achieved a retreat, and then finally the creation of the new name “Muscat de Noel”, considered a premier wine, to be consumed from the third Thursday in November. In the zero year of the sweet drink, 20,000 bottles were sold and drunk in the viral climate of the great Catalan fiesta.

Today, more than eighty growers or sellers produce Christmas Muscat in 89 towns in the Pyrenees-Orientales department. And 9 municipalities of Aude. Now Muscat de Noel is on sale, and therefore you can try it in Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia!