down to the bottle-o!...

...for some wine from the stunning Chateau de Grezan.
Now home to the Cros-Pujol family who began making wine in 1877 from a small parcel of Carignan between Autignac and Laurens.

The Chateau is described as a 'forteresse de fantaisie' a folly inspired by a medieval castle and inspired by Eugene Viollet-le Duc a 19th century architect who restored the city of Carcassone, hence the nickname 'Little Carcassone'.
Originally a Roman villa the site was also visited by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compestella, was a Knight Templars base and thena commandery of Knights Hospitaller( a Benedictine Nursing Order founded in the 12th century at the time of the Templars).

Many of the chateaus in the Languedoc are more recent than one might think funded by the arrival of the railroads in 1853 which enabled movements of wine throughout France and Europe at a time when all you needed  was 'a harvest to build a chateau'!
Sometimes called 'Palaces of Aramonie' from red wine grape Aramon grown primarily in Languedoc -Rousillon between the late 19th and mid 20th century or  'pinardier castles' from the slang term 'pinard' for red wine .
And curiously many are only one room and a corridor deep, the size and grandness in the huge and long facades, fortress like battlements and towers.

And yes we did buy some very fine wines from the Chateau Grezan.