2023 Mas Des Bressades Cuvee Tradition Blanc, Costieres de Nimes

These wines from Costières de Nîmes-based Mas des Bressades are made by Cyril Marès. While the reds are all rock solid, he makes a crazy good white based on Roussanne and Viognier that punches well above its price point. 

Jeb Dunnuck jebdunnuck.com

Mas des Bressades has been a staple in my house for more than a decade. 

Joe Czerwinski robertparker.com

One of the most sought-after French whites for its amazing value

A beautiful blend of 50% Roussanne, 30% Grenache Blanc, 10% Marsanne, 10% Viognier - a classic white blend in the South. Pale yellow with golden reflections, this wine has a very limpid color. It has an intense nose of white peach and almonds flowers and a great complexity in the mouth. Grenache blanc brings minerality, viognier aromas of apricot and peach and Marsanne mains more floral.
A fresh attack characteristic of Roussanne supports this aromatic complexity by bringing citrus notes and a mineral touch. Brilliant quality for the friendly price tag.

Cyril has always lived between the vines and orchards of his father Roger Marès. After studying agronomy and viticulture and oenology in Montpellier, he went to make wine on other continents before taking over the estate. Cyril returned to the Costières de Nîmes at the Mas des Bressades in 1996. Returning with a passion for wine and for the terroir of the Mas des Bressades, his objective is to preserve as much as possible the qualitative potential of the terroir while respecting the vine and the soils. "I seek in each wine the harmony between the different origins and components of the wine so that everyone feels when drinking it the pleasure I had in making it."

For centuries, making wine in the Marès family has been as much an art as a family tradition. Cyril maintains, on the estate created by Roger Marès in 1964, who had also created with his father Henri (1903-1994) a vineyard in the Haut-Médoc. And it is as a pioneer that he applied in Costières the good lessons of Gironde.
This tradition so brilliantly illustrated by Henri Marès (1820-1901), friend of Pasteur and discoverer of the treatment of powdery mildew, scourge of vines, by sulfur and his brother Paul illustrious botanist who settled in Algeria where he could not help but establish a vineyard. Their father Etienne Marès (1780 - 1840) had left the family estate run by his father Pierre Marès (1758-1820) on the banks of the Thau lagoon to become a wine merchant and later acquire the Château de Launac near Montpellier.