Harlequin Wines, established in 2000 by Martin Bayne, is a company dedicated to quality. The wines we choose appeal to the discerning wine lover. Our philosophy is simple. Search long and hard to find the new, unusual and the delightful. Then dealing direct with the wine-makers we can ensure quality, and value for money.

In 2007 Jon Bowen contacted me about featuring his wines. He was a contempary at Plumpton College of Gavin Crisfield the winemaker at La Sauvageonne. A visit last September to the vineyard 1km from the old Spanish border halfway between Narbonne and Perpignan convinced me that his wines were worth it.

Jon Bowen trained as a winemaker in Britain but spent most of the 1990s looking after other people’s vineyards in the south of France while his wife Liz worked back in England.

“We started looking for a vineyard in the Languedoc, an area which I knew very well, and which was affordable. I knew what size and type of property would suit us, the quality of the land and the type of product we wanted so as soon as I saw this place, it was cut and dried. We bought it through the Société d'Aménagement Foncier et d'Etablissement Rural (SAFER), the French government body selling land in agricultural zones.”

“We have 15 hectares but, like a lot of vineyards in this area, it is spread over a dozen locations. In fact, it would take three-quarters of an hour to drive between the two furthest parcels.”

“It’s hard all year – growing, producing and then selling, but we are in it for the love of creating a product. As for the downsides, French paperwork is legendary and it's always nice when the pruning comes to an end. The most stressful time is March when you look at the year ahead to make sure that everything is in place.”

“We are coming up to our fifth harvest. Most of our production is AOC Corbières and a certain amount vin de table. The vast majority is sold to independent wine merchants in the UK. We average around 40,000 bottles a year and the grapes are all hand-picked, not just for the obvious quality reasons but because you simply could not drive a harvester up some of our slopes.”