In the Languedoc, a viala is a community, or group of people living and working together. Fancy city folk like us love to hate on small towns. I mean, they don’t even have fine art museums or Lululemons! Where’s the dadgum culture and diversity?!?!? Well, ironically, it’s precisely what we love about the great winemaking villages in Europe. They are mostly very small towns that rely on a community of variable skill sets, resources, and collaboration in order to compensate for the lack of metropolitan convenience. Grandma is knitting your next pair of Yoga Pants in exchange for editing her VLOG and a bottle of homemade Kombucha. Chateau de Mattes-Sabran has been around for a thousand years, making wine and serving their Corbières community. This Rhone-esque blend is sourced from their ancient vineyards in Corbières (pop. 1,196), just west of Provence. The size of Mattes-Sabran’s vineyards is a legacy of the estate’s ancient role as the seat of the duke of Narbonne. But more importantly, it drinks kind of like a blend of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Cornas… at a fraction of the price.