Bottom’s Up – anyone for some knicker wine?

After readers responded wittily to our story on naturist grape-pickers this morning and suggested names on Facebook for the wine – Naked Wine, indeed – we looked for interestingly named wines and found this… La Petite Culotte de Chateau Lacombe.

And, yes, the wine really is named for French knickers… And, yes, foreign buyers are quite taken by the rather risqué label and the dry white Bordeaux Haut-Benauge AOC sells quite well.

There is, as you would expect, a story behind the name and we decided to get to the bottom of it.

It involves Gabriel Marès, the great-grandfather of the present owner of Chateau Lacombe, Jean-Hubert Laville.

Gabriel was a womaniser and loved to spend time ‘alone’ among the white vines he had planted on a remote part of the vineyard. Perhaps too much time for his daughter who decided to see what he was doing.

She did not find him but, under an oak at the edge of the vineyard, she found a pair of “piche biste” the vieux patois words for slit French knickers – also known as “pisse vite”.

She took them back to the house and left them where they would be seen. Gabriel kept quiet.

The knickers are now in the vineyard museum at Saint Sulpice de Pommiers, Gironde, where La Petite Culotte de Chateau Lacombe sells for €27.90 a bottle.

However, it may not be everyone’s idea of a cheeky little wine. Although labelled a ‘dry’ wine, the vineyard said today it was not classically dry but had a “very interesting” taste that was a “little malty” in the mouth.