Monday morning: We start with Vignobles Brumont, where Alain Brumont really revitalized the appellation with his wines at Chateaus Montus and Bouscassé. We are supposed to meet at Chateau Montus, but all signposts lead to Bouscassé-Montus so we find ourselves at Chateau Bouscassé, where it turns out we are expected anyway. From there we go to Chateau Montus, about 10 km away (but impossible to find without a guide), where an old property that Alain purchased from the monks has been restored, and a splendid new vinification facility has been built, all gleaming stainless steel, thousands of oak barrels, and granite floors. It looks rather like a cathedral inside, and they call it the Church of Tannat. On the route back to Chateau Bouscassé we make a detour to see Alain’s top vineyard, La Tyre, on a steep, stony slope. At Bouscassé, Alain gestures upstairs and says, “I was born here. I’ve accomplished in thirty years what it took the grand chateaus 200 years to do.” Now he makes wine from 125 ha at Chateau Montus, which with its prestige cuvées is undoubtedly top of the game in Madiran, and from 120 ha at Chateau Bouscassé. In addition there’s the Torus line from Madiran and a range of wines from IGP Côtes de Gascogne. Vignobles Brumont dwarfs everything else in Madiran.

Madiran is famous, of course, for the Tannat grape, whose aggressive tannins used to make the wine undrinkable for years if not decades. It’s a measure of the situation, that at most producers, the entry level wines come from assemblage of Tannat with Cabernet (either Sauvignon or Franc), because this makes them more approachable; monocépage Tannat is usually reserved for the top wines. It’s a fine thing when Cabernet has a calming effect! Tannat was tamed by the invention of micro-oxygenation by Patrick Ducournau, but when I ask Alain about this, he says that he doesn’t use it, that his success with Chateau Montus is due entirely to his introduction of barrique aging (which was revolutionary when he started it in 1980). “The barriques give quite enough oxygen to the wine,” he says. Certainly whenever I am able to compare a wine matured solely in cuve with one aged in barriques, irrespective of the producer, it is clear that wood-aging is to the way take off those sharp edges.

Lunchtime: We are running a bit late after a chat with Alain about his history, but arrive just in time for a delicious lunch at Chateau Barréjat with Denis Capmartin and his wife, and export manager Robert Tiessen. We start in traditional manner with foie gras accompanied by sweet wine, in this case from Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh, which geographically overlaps with Madiran but is the appellation for white wine, either dry or sweet. Mostly from Petit Manseng, the wines are a direct comparison with Jurançon but have a different flavor spectrum, more peaches and cream than apricots, sometimes slightly herbal, and if they turn savory, showing white truffles rather than black. We go on to compare the Tradition and Seduction reds from Madiran, the first matured in cuve and the second in wood, and then wind up with the prestige cuvées, Vieux Ceps and l’Extreme.

These special cuvées come from very old vines, some perhaps as old as 200 years, but certainly preceding phylloxera. When phylloxera arrived, Denis’s great grandfather replanted most of the vineyards, but two small plots—about 4 ha in all—survived. About three quarters of the vines in these plots are still growing on their own roots; when a vine dies, it’s replaced by selection massale from an existing vine, but of course is planted on rootstock. The wines certainly have an extra level of concentration and intensity, but more than that, what makes them special is the broader flavor spectrum compared with production from younger vines. Denis has truly mastered the tannins of Tannat; the special cuvées are well worth trying.

A prephylloxera vine at Chateau Barréjat

Afternoon: We wind up at Chateau d’Aydie, which is the headquarters of Vignobles Laplace. The chateau appears to be under reconstruction, but next door are the chais, much vaster than you might expect, as Laplace use the facility to produce red, white, and rosé from the Côtes de Gascogne. From Chateau d’Aydie itself we taste a dry white (Pacherenc Sec), the range of reds from Madiran, and then the sweet whites from Pacherenc. We wind up with a really unusual wine, a VDN (sweet fortified wine) made from Tannat. “It’s intended to show the versatility of Tannat,” says François Laplace. Perhaps not surprisingly given Tannat’s character, it’s distinctly more like Port than any VDN I have had from anywhere else in France. Chateau d’Aydie has vineyards in three separate locations in Madiran, and each of the three red cuvées comes from assemblage from lots from all three locations. “We believe it’s always more interesting to make an assemblage,” François says.

Conclusions: Tannat is not an easy grape. Vinification veers between the Scylla of softening it so much that varietal typicity is lost, and the Charybdis of keeping its character, but showing so much tannin that it can’t be drunk for years. I can see why they add Cabernet, because 100% Tannat can easily slip over into a fruit profile that’s flattened by the tannins: the Cabernet gives aromatic lift as well as freshness. Yet the top wines at Chateau d’Aydie show a taut quality that will mature to elegance when the tannins resolve, but I think that really needs most of a decade: the 2006 (a very good result for a difficult year) is just coming round. The oldest wine I tasted, the Chateau Montus Cuvée Prestige 2002, is just beginning to get flavor variety, but you still have to get past the tannins. Mastering the tannins is really the first step: I suspect you have to get Tannat pretty ripe for it show interesting aromatic complexity.