Domaine Cauhapé, Quintessence du Petit Manseng, Jurançon, Southwest France 2017 (13.5%)

£100 Liberty Wines

Jurançon is not a large appellation, and its little Pyrenean corner of France’s southwest is easily overlooked – until, that is, you taste a Jurançon of this quality, and you realise that you have a giant among dessert wines in your glass. Not in terms of unction and richness: it’s not a steamroller. But its aromatic refinement is second to none, thanks to its long, lingering season and the extraordinary potential of the Petit Manseng variety. One sniff of this wine, with its layers of lemon, frangipane and gardenia, will stop you in your tracks, and the palate – at first richly aromatic, then long and flavourful, both luscious and cleansing – more than lives up to the aromatic promise. Few dessert wines are more complete, or more arresting.

‘The estate, which has existed since 1980, is my history, my life,’ says Henri Ramonteu, Cauhapé’s owner-winemaker. The property comprises 54ha of vines encircled by forest, and grapes were first grown here in the mid-16th century.

Today, Ramonteau employs a holistic philosophy that extends not only to using plant extracts to protect and stimulate the vines, but also the notion that our own sense of wellbeing plays a role, meaning one must always be in a positive mood before entering the vineyard because the energies we release will end up in the grapes and therefore the wine: ‘My wine-growing religion is to listen to nature and maintain a strong bond with the plant,’ he says.

‘Petit Manseng is a great grape variety,’ insists Ramonteu. ‘It expresses itself best in this area, at altitudes of 250m-400m, and exposed to great thermal contrasts with very cool nights.

‘It is a late-ripening grape with a very thick skin and the berries undergo passerillage [the grapes wither on the vine, shrivelled by both sun and frost] before being harvested, usually in the week before Christmas.’

The picking is carried out by hand (yields are lower than 10hl/ha) and the juice is 100% barrel-fermented in new oak.