Petit Salé from Chateau Roquefort is the best value white wine from Southern France that you're likely to overlook, though I highly encourage you to play it cooler (and less pretentiously) than I did when having it for the first time.

Unlike Bandol, the brisk, high-altitude setting here cannot fully ripen Mourvèdre, but it's perfect for macerated white wines. A blend of Clairette and Vermentino, Petit Salé builds on ripe, unctuous white peach and briny citrus flavors, finishing with a persistent salty inflection. This microclimate on limestone and clay soils proved to me that a Southern French white can deliver all of the mouth-watering salinity as Chablis and Riesling while still capturing its orchard fruit characteristics.

Villeneuve returned home in 1995 after spending time producing Burgundy's Grand Cru Clos de Tart for Mommessin. He use both organic and biodynamic farming practices. Also, this is the same distributor behind other small but mighty vignerons who you may have heard of, like Jerome Prevost, Cedric Bouchard, and Soldera.

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