THE Languedoc and Roussillon regions of southern France were once known only for their bulk wine production. This area was once a major contributor to the European wine lake but things have changed.

On my first visit to the region back in 1978, there was still an ocean of very poor wine being made. The unbelievable stuff we were served as part of our hostel meal came as a real shock.

Now there are quite a few serious producers who are making top quality wines, some of them from the very same vines that were once thought so poor.

The improvements in vineyard practice and wine-making have been enormous. Many of the poorest vineyard sites usually on the flat plains have been subsidised out of existence. If not, the falling demand for bog standard 'rinse cochon' has had an impact.

The remaining vineyards have been scrutinised to see what improvements could be made. There are some things that are impossible to alter about the region. The soils which are more than suitable for quality wine production are permanent factors and the day we can control the weather is the day we might actually get a summer in this country.

The first thing to change was the way the vineyard and the winery were run, which often meant the people involved in running them had to change.

An influx of New World expertise was inevitable. The enormous success of the Australians with their hot, dry climate was a perfect background to revolutionising the wines of this part of France.

Fortunately for such revolutionaries the land was relatively cheap and the wine laws rather loose, certainly in comparison with the laws relating to the big French wine regions. Some turned to the international star vine varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay while others tried to improve the quality of the indigenous varieties.

For vines such as Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre, the quality had always been there but the vines had been squeezed to produce to much. Other varieties such as Carignan can actually make a good wine when kept to low yields, something of a revelation to this correspondent.

One of the newer outfits in this part of the world is the Abbotts company based in Montpellier, founded by Dr Nerida Abbott, a wine researcher turned wine-maker and her renowned international winemaker husband Nigel Sneyd, along with innovative UK wine importer Guy Anderson.

Dr Abbott is an expert on the Syrah grape, known in her native Australia as Shiraz. Her husband has worked with most of the groundbreaking Flying Wine operations in this part of the world. They decided to put their expertise into practice by making top quality wines from the undoubted potential that they knew was possible.

Exhaustive liaison with the growers of the region and extensive testing and assessment of the quality of the grapes is of paramount importance. It is all too easy to let the grapes over-ripen in this part of the world. Careful selection leads to the best batches being sent for vinification under the strict control of Dr Abbott.

The wines are then kept in separate batches for the final blending. The aim is to extract the best wine possible from these regions. We recently tasted the Abbotts Ammonite Cotes du Roussillon 1998 priced £4.99 at Waitrose and Oddbins.

This has a soft, supple ripe red fruits nose with a smooth, finely balanced plummy flavour with traces of roast beef, or steak au poivre. Try it with either.

The Abbotts Cumulus Minervois 1998 Oddbins, Sainsbury's, Safeway, First Quench priced £5.49 has a warm, smoky plum nose with a whiff of herbs and tar. On the palate, this is a ripe, tangy, slightly earthy red with a peppery plum edge. There is a touch of licorice and spice on the finish.

The Abbotts Cirrus Cabardes 1998 Oddbins priced £5.99 has a lovely, dark blackcurrant nose with a spicy , warm earth edge. On the palate this is full of spicy, plum and blackcurrant fruit with a gravelly taste, like sucking a pebble, that almost gives the palate a texture.