Wine of the Week: Château de la Liquière Terre du Sud

A brilliant bargain from Faugères in the Languedoc

Generally the life of a freelance wine writer is a good one. You get free wine and if you have the time you could probably spend your life either on a press trip or at lavish lunches - indeed some do. If it wasn’t for the ridiculously low pay, then it would be the dream job.

But it’s not all champagne and skittles. If you’re serious about finding good quality affordable wine for your burgeoning Substack readership (2300 and counting), it means braving the large retailer tastings where there might be over 200 wines to get through. Most of them incredibly dull. 

Now, I don’t envy buyers who have to find a wine that customers will like and can be sold at a decent profit once they’ve paid duty (£2.67 on a 13% bottle but due to go up again soon) VAT, shipping etc. It’s getting increasingly hard to find good wines under £10. When I started out, you could buy some quite nice wines for £2.99 and £5 bought you something quite distinguished. 

As a wine writer, you really have to taste everything, or nearly everything which can be a dispiriting exercise. But it’s worth it because every so often you’ll strike gold as I did at the recent Majestic tasting.