Château de Jau is the region's most tourist-ready winery, with an alfresco restaurant, a tasting room and a modern art museum.   In Roussillon:     Wineries   Where to Stay   Where to Eat   Find more destinations in our Travel section

The same peculiarly wondrous light that drew artists such as Henri Matisse to Roussillon a century ago still fires the imagination in this corner of southern France where the Mediterranean meets the Pyrenees. But today, the region's most compelling artists work in kitchens and vineyards, not art studios.

They're concocting neo-Fauvist creations such as a sorbet of thyme or tiny tomatoes dipped into a candy coating, and making wines that transcend the easily recognizable. Syrah is in evidence, but Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are shunned for the likes of Carignane, Mourvèdre, Macabeu and Grenache in hues of black, white and gray.

The light is most recognizable from Collioure, a seaside town of markets and restaurants that serves as a good base for exploring the area. From a terrace carved deep into a cliff at the hotel Relais des Trois Mas, overlooking the Collioure harbor, the deep blue of the Mediterranean shifts to green and purple in the stillness of the early morning. At sunset, a panorama of robin's egg blue can disappear behind a dramatic sweep of yellow and orange.

Matisse and André Derain arrived in Collioure in 1905 and began painting what they saw. The sand of cherry red and sky the color of ripe peaches they conjured up were imaginative artistic statements to be sure -- but perhaps not as imaginative as someone unfamiliar with this corner of French Catalonia might suppose.

Roussillon's food and wine of today may seem like similar flights of fancy, but they're a product of modern thinking brought to bear on the best the region has to offer. The revolution in quality that is transforming Spanish wine is also underway on this side of the border, where the rocky terrain has been under vine for thousands of years. What had been a region of cheap, rough wines is becoming a laboratory for new techniques, from the trellised vines that are slowly replacing the old bush plantings to new oak barrels, rarely used here until recently.

As a result, the region's wine profile has changed dramatically. The rich, sweet wines of Banyuls, which defined Roussillon's winemaking for centuries, are still in evidence, but dry wines, both white and red, are the current source of excitement. This is likely the best time in Roussillon's winemaking history.

Jérôme Malet's story could serve as Roussillon's prototype. His maternal grandfather, Jérôme Sarda, planted Grenache and Carignane outside Perpignan in the 1930s and set out to make wine. "It was absolutely awful," Malet says. "When he needed to put in 2 grams of sulfites, he'd put in 6 grams, just to make sure. He sold it to people who obviously wanted to buy it, but I can't understand why."

Malet learned about wine by helping to drink through his father Max's cellar, including a memorable 1916 Latour. Then he went off to school, and landed in Paris as an interior designer. Max Malet started renovating Domaine Sarda, his in-laws' family business, in the early '80s. A fruit and vegetable importer by trade, he added Syrah, Mourvèdre, Marsanne and Malvasia to the mix and worked as a weekend winemaker. From 1982 to 1992, the renamed Sarda-Malet evolved from selling bad bulk wine to putting drinkable wine in bottles.

Then Max Malet died suddenly, and his wife called on their son to continue his work. Jérôme started commuting from Paris, tussling with his grandfather about the yields of the vines. "[My grandfather] was a gardener and a farmer," says Malet, now 40. "He couldn't understand why we would possibly want low yields. He thought he had failed because the terroir he'd chosen wasn't giving us these massive amounts of grapes like his neighbors were getting. I kept telling him it was a blessing, but he didn't believe it, right to the end."

Jérôme Sarda died in 1996, and his mindset died with him: The outskirts of Perpignan, the largest city in the region, are pushing against the vineyards; the wines have been altered beyond recognition. With its alcohol level of 15.6 percent and concentrated fruit, Malet's 2001 L'Insouciant Grenache could pass for a California cult wine, or an old-vine bottling from Spain's Priorat made from the same grape. L'Insouciant isn't a mission statement, but a compelling exploration of the region's possibilities.

Wine shops such as Les Caves du Roussillon in Collioure and Perpignan sell new bottlings such as Sarda-Malet's alongside the old names, offering a history lesson in Roussillon wine with every walk through the aisle. It isn't just Sarda-Malet, but Clos du Fees, Gauby, Gardiès, and other emerging names. "The changes have been radical," says Jean Gardiès, who has overhauled his own family's winery and now makes some of the best wines in the region.

What a visitor won't find here are sophisticated tourist facilities in the wineries. With the exception of Château de Jau, which offers a restaurant and an art museum, these wineries are places designed strictly for functionality. Gérard Gauby makes a wine that sells for as much as $240 at some restaurants, but a visit to his winery in the village of Calce is like stepping through a closet that hasn't been cleaned out in years. "There's not much to look at inside," says Denis Ferrer of Ferrer-Ribière about his featureless winery in Terrats, and he might be speaking of the entire region. These winemakers have been too busy renovating what's in their bottles to spend time on the trappings.

Still, you can visit nearly every winery in the region if you call ahead. You can also eat your way through the area on a Michelin-starred path, from Auberge du Vieux Puits in Fontjoncouse in the north, just over the border in Languedoc, to Le Neptune in Collioure. Or you can stick to the humble, fish-oriented cuisine of the small brasseries and bodegas at this fascinating intersection of French, Spanish and Catalan culture.

Either way, with a glass of local wine in hand as the sun goes down, you'll see what Matisse saw. Don't be surprised if the experience alters your perceptions, and your Cabernets and Chardonnays never taste quite the same again.

Bruce Schoenfeld has been writing for Wine Spectator since 1995.

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