A while ago I bemoaned the lack of nice, cheap Vendéen wine [here]. Well, my complaints met with a swift rebuttal from my friend Jon over at The Vendee Blog [link], who suggested that actually there were lots of Vendéen wines about and I agreed that we should probably try some before making such bold claims.

So, on our night out at La Rochelle we took along a bottle of Chaignée Cadet rouge, from the vinyards at Vix [map]. And, to be honest, it wasn’t at all bad. I have had much worse wines in my time (unsurprisingly) and it was very quaffable. I’m not sure if it made any difference that we drank it out of the worlds tiniest glasses [evidence here], but at least that meant that it lasted a long time!

Buoyed by our success with this wine, Lisa slung a bottle of “Vendée One” Rose, from Rosnay [map], into the trolley the other day, and, although I am yet to sample that one, she tells me that it too is a rather pleasant selection.

So it seems that, from our brief foray into the wines of our region, there is hope. However, both the wines we have tried were in the region of €3.49 each, a good €1 over what we would normally pay. I know this is down to volumes etc and as the market for these wines increases then prices will fall, but when one is more focussed on quantity rather than quality, unfortunately the mass-produced, cheap-and-cheerful will continue to be our main-stay.

So apologies to the master growers in the region. Your wine is nice and will no doubt grace our table from time to time. But please let me know when you start doing a 10 litre box for €12