Andrew Jefford profiles Rob Dougan in Gourmet Traveller

Andrew Jefford profiles Rob Dougan in Gourmet Traveller

In an article for Gourmet Traveller (almost 10 years to the day after being last interviewed in the The Guardian newspaper), Andrew Jefford (one of the world’s finest wine writers) tracks down Rob Dougan in the inland hills of the South of France and looks at the work at La Pèira.

Claiming, “The unusual thing about Rob Dougan is that he doesn’t think like most Languedoc domaine owners. He is madder or more innocent”, he goes on to look at the La Pèira wines.

Here it is just possible, “that high-quality wine was made hereabouts in Roman times. This is not a typically rocky, austere Languedoc hill site; the deep, filtering gravels are more sumptuous and Bordeaux-like.”

Of his subject, he states he is, “enigmatic and thin-skinned; self-demeaning and understated but fiercely proud”.

For all this, he concludes, La Pèira has produced, “great wines, the kind of wines that can jolt consumers’ perceptions of the Languedoc and can rival the best from Bordeaux, and the Rhône. Maybe, given time, they might even right a historical wrong.”

Part of Andrew Jefford’s article in the Oct/Nov edition of Gourmet Traveller can be found excerpted here (or by clicking on the image above).

Andrew Jefford is the author of The New France (a seminal work on the wines of France) and Peat Smoke and Spirit: A Portrait of Islay (on Islay and its Whiskies) amongst many other publications, and writes for Decanter, The World of Fine Wine, and The Financial Times (FT). His website can be found here.

The Gourmet traveller website can be found here.