The wonderful world of wine bottle capsules

Ever wondered what the letters and numbers on the foil of your French wine bottle mean?

In France the foil is called a capsule CRD (capsule representative de droit) and it's a seal of official approval - a guarantee that all taxes due on the wine in France have been paid. The enduring symbol of French state sanction, the profile of Marianne, sits reassuringly in the middle of the foil.

Around the edge of the foil there's a sequence of numbers and letters. The sequence starts with a two-digit French département number telling you where the wine was bottled (and normally produced). '11' would mean it was bottled in Aude, '30' in Gard, and so on. A single letter usually follow this number and describes who bottled the wine . 'R' stands for récoltant (literally 'harvester' ), 'E' for an authorised warehouse and 'N' for a négociant (merchant). The last number, usually three digits, is the database number assigned to the bottler.

Which colour is 209c?

Until five years ago the colour of the foil always had a specific meaning. Green designated  top- quality AOC(AOP) wines and blue vin de table or vin de pays. In 2011 the French authorities allowed purple foils to be used instead of either green or blue. The purple is supposed to be representative of the colour of wine lees (the dead yeast cells left after fermentation) and, with a characteristic eye for bureaucratic detail, the authorities even nominated an approved pantone number for the shade of purple closest to lie de vin.
For any colour anoraks out there, the number is 209c. It may not have been entirely intentional but French foils now have appealing variations on the prescribed colours - vive la différence!

Years ago my older son was given a school holiday geography project to tell the story of a river. Most of his classmates seized the opportunity to cut and paste from Wikipedia entries on the Nile, Amazon or Thames. We were on holiday in France so he was forced instead to choose a local river - the Aude. We followed the river's course from the high valley to where it enters the sea at Cabanes de Fleury. As our family group stood shivering in a windswept car park at the river's terminus we agreed it was a pretty low-key and unremarkable journey's end. The last few kilometres seemed particularly featureless and struggling to find a navigable roadway across the swampy and almost deserted landscape, I'd barely noticed the vines.

Salt water kills vines. How is it possible to grow them in this place, just a flat kilometre or so from the sea? The answer, it seems, is a complex system of sluices and drainage ditches which use the Aude's fresh water to minimise the risk. And then the vines are deliberately flooded! I suppose the logic is that any salt water finding its way to the vineyards would be diluted.

This is not the only adaptation to a marginal environment. The vines are planted franc de pied - not grafted on to root stock. This makes them very susceptible to the Phylloxera pest (which virtually destroyed the French wine industry at the end of the nineteenth century). Not surprisingly this method is now officially described as 'very rare'. I know of one grower who uses this method - Christophe Barbier - who makes wine from from just over a hectare of Bourboulenc vines. From this outpost of extreme viticulture he produces wine some critics swoon over. It has been described as many things but the adjectives normally include salty, pungent or iodised. Predictably it's called  Les Terres Salées and  is supposed to be a perfect accompaniment to lobster or bouillabaisse. I bought a bottle of the 2014 a little while ago but haven't tasted it. A full report will follow!