Archive note: figures updated in 2026.
Picpoul de Pinet has made me a lot of friends. Since around 2009 it has been reliable chat fuel in London pubs, usually because someone at the table has just noticed the fluted green bottle and wants to know what’s in it. There’s more history behind this crisp white from the shores of the Étang de Thau, in the Languedoc (now part of Occitanie), than its easy-going reputation suggests. Here are seven facts that may even help with your next pub quiz.
1. The British drink a large share of it
Britain is Picpoul de Pinet’s biggest export market. By the late 2010s around a third of all production was being sold in the UK, and by 2023 that figure had reached about 41%. With the appellation producing roughly 11 million bottles a year, that adds up to a lot of after-work glasses.
2. The bottle is called a Neptune
Since 1995, almost every Picpoul de Pinet has come in the same tall, fluted green bottle, known as the Neptune. Look closely and you’ll find three symbols in the glass: waves around the neck for the sea, the cross of Languedoc for the wine’s roots, and a band of Doric columns around the base, a nod to the Via Domitia, the Roman road that runs through the appellation.
The bottle is a protected collective design and nearly every producer uses it, which is a large part of why you can spot a Picpoul from across a bar. It has since been made lighter to reduce its environmental footprint.
3. The grape comes in three colours
Piquepoul is the grape, Picpoul de Pinet is the wine, and Pinet is the village. Stay with me. Piquepoul has been grown around here since the 14th century, and it exists in black, grey and white versions. White is the one that took hold around Pinet, and some believe it began life as a mutation of the black, although the records don’t settle the question either way. Black Piquepoul is still one of the permitted grapes in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
4. Picpoul and the phylloxera years
In the second half of the 19th century, the vine louse phylloxera tore through Europe’s vineyards. It feeds on vine roots but can’t survive in sandy soil, and Piquepoul happens to grow well in it.
As growers replanted, the grape found a refuge in the sandier ground near the lagoon, which helps explain why it ended up so closely tied to this stretch of coast. The appellation’s soils today are mainly limestone and clay, with the sand in the lower-lying parcels.
5. Picpoul and oysters had a matchmaker
The oyster tables of Bouzigues sit in the Étang de Thau, within sight of the vineyards, so the pairing looks obvious now. It owes a good deal to Etienne Farras, president of the Pinet co-operative, who persuaded local restaurants and bars that the wine and the local shellfish belonged together. The lemony acidity and faint saltiness of the wine do the rest, and the two have been a fixture on seafood platters around the lagoon ever since.
6. It can only be made from one grape
Picpoul de Pinet must be made entirely from white Piquepoul grown in six villages around the lagoon: Pinet, Mèze, Florensac, Castelnau-de-Guers, Montagnac and Pomérols. Other grapes grow in the area too, but they don’t get into the Neptune bottle.
Appellation status arrived in 1985, when Picpoul de Pinet became a named area within the Coteaux du Languedoc, and production went from 1.7 million bottles that year to around 4 million a decade later. It became a full AOC in its own right in 2013.
7. Picpoul means “lip-stinger”
If you remember nothing else after an evening with friends, remember this one: pique-poul translates as “lip-stinger”, a reference to the grape’s sharp acidity. You never know when you might need it.
Why London took to it
A London pub list without a Picpoul de Pinet looks a little unfinished these days. The wine is fresh, salty and lip-stinging, and it arrived on British tables around the same time as Prosecco, at a similarly friendly price.
Where Prosecco is made on a vast scale, Picpoul comes from roughly 1,500 hectares wrapped around one lagoon, and that sense of a particular place has served it well. People want it the way they want the right trainers: something everyone recognises, from a small enough place that ordering it still feels like a find.
Since this post was first written
The appellation introduced a “Patience” category in 2018 for richer Picpoul de Pinet made to age, and changes to the AOC rules in 2025 were designed to support growth while improving the region’s sustainability credentials.
More from the Languedoc: Domaine Peyre Rose
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