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Sud de France flags up extended Occitanie reach at 10th anniversary tasting

Published:  06 October, 2016

Marketing brand Sud de France used its annual London tasting to communicate and clarify its extended Occitanie reach

Marketing brand Sud de France used its annual tasting in London to communicate and clarify its reach, which has extended to include Occitanie, combining Languedoc-Roussillon with Midi-Pyrenees.

The extension of the umbrella Sud de France brand's remit occurred in July this year, following the French government's creation of Occitanie on 1 January 2016, and has now seen the integration of wines, food, tourism and cultural promotion and marketing under the Sud de France banner.

Speaking at the tasting, where many examples of the new fresh face and far-reaching diversity of the region's wines were on show, Isabelle Kanaan, executive director of Sud de France in the UK, explained how these changes would benefit the region's wines.

"On the 1 October we announced officially that Sud de France will now extend across all products in the new region, bringing together a huge section of the south west of France, including 75% of wine producers, and a lot of related cultural, tourism and food factors," said Kanaan.

Since its creation in 2006, the Sud de France brand now represents some 3,000 companies and regional producers, accounting for more than 9,000 products, allowing for much cross-fertilisation in marketing.

The importance of the region to the French wine industry is clear from the figures.

25% of French wines exported to the UK come from Sud de France, with an increase in value of 11% in the past decade, while 25% of all French wine exports to China also come from here, and the average sales price of wines from Sud de France have risen by 37.7% globally in those 10 years.

"We represent the biggest wine region in the word, but are still not as well understood by consumers, so our message is that there is still much much to discover," said Kanaan.

It was a message that was clear from the wines shown at the tasting in central London, where the diversity of styles and varieties was more than equal to any rival wine-producing region globally.

What also stood out, from a region once best known for volume production, was the fresh, modern-leaning styles of many wines, together with some great value across both supermarket and independent trade-focused flights.

Kanaan said that while the wine of the region had taken a hit, especially at IGP level, because of rationalisation of supermarket ranges, UK sales remained "pretty good" in the on-trade and independent sectors, with styles such as Picpoul underpinning greater interest at the more premium level.

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