Out in the wilds of the Languedoc, you’d want your winemaker to be somewhat wild of hair, with features sun-burned to copper and a handshake like a blacksmith’s. The ones foregathered recently at Chelsea’s Colombier restaurant to celebrate the perfect marriage of their red wines to a robust cassoulet all answered satisfyingly to this description even if they were — to a man, as it were — women.

Fittingly, behind the stove was a man, and one who knows a thing or two about French provincial cooking – Henry Harris, excellent chef-patron of Racine in Knightsbridge. “Cassoulet is half about the meat,” he says “and you need at least two of the ‘big four’ – always best quality Toulouse sausage, then some confit of duck or rabbit, and pork belly – and half about the beans. I prefer Haricot Tarbais if I can get them.”

The evening was arranged by the AOC du Languedoc trade association and among the wines presented were a couple from Constance Rerolle’s excellent Château de L’Engarran. The “Cuvée Tradition” 2003 (Oddbins £7.99) is all about aromas of leather and juniper and coffee partnered with well-judged, toasty oak but Constance has given it a softer, feminine touch in the palate as well. Her top wine, the “Cuvée Quetton Saint-Georges” 2003 (Oddbins £12.99), has spent 18 months in oak and is a notch or two up in terms of concentration, extract and intensity. “There’s a long tradition of independently-minded women in our part of the world and we’re just carrying it on,” Constance remarked of her fellow vigneronnes. The region has made great strides since the days of producing only endless tankerfuls of vin ordinaire and a lot of the wines kept something about them of what in the Rhône they call garrigue — the low-growing herbaceous scrub that includes wild thyme, juniper and rosemary and that seems to scent the whole region. It’s such a marked characteristic in Susan Close’s Château Camplazens wines that she’s named one of her cuvées after it. Susan is not the only English lady winemaker in the Languedoc, but I’m taking bets that she’s the only one to get there via 20 years living in New Orleans. You can smell the summer heat of the South-West — in a good way — in her Garrigue 2003 (£7.99 Delibo Fine Wines) which has dollops of brambly fruit and solid tannins on the palate.

Now I was going to sign off with a recommendation that you hie thee to Fortnum and Mason to stock up on a few tins of their cassoulet to tide you through the winter but I’ve just been down there and they’ve put it in a posh jar with a fancy label and doubled — yes, doubled — the price to a tenner. I suppose they have to pay for their impressive remodelling of the shop somehow, so instead it’s me asking you for a recommendation: just who does sell quality Cazzers at a decent price? Drop us an email if you know . . .