Domaine Cauhape Jurancon Sec Geyser 2021

Jurançon is beloved of sommeliers and found in the best restaurants in France, yet still sits off the radar for most wine drinkers. That was not always so: in 1553 the future Henri IV was baptised at Pau with garlic and a spoonful of Jurançon. Five years later a small rural property was entered in the land register as Caussapé, and it was on that property, by then his parents' farm, that Henri Ramonteau established Domaine Cauhapé in 1980.

He began with a single hectare and has built the estate to 47, becoming the most renowned producer of Jurançon in both dry and sweet styles. Half an hour west of Pau and a hundred kilometres from Biarritz, the domaine sits in a temperate Atlantic climate in the rain shadow of the Pyrénées, on clay soils on moderately steep slopes facing south to south-east. The warm, dry föhn wind blowing up from the south ventilates the vineyard, so botrytis is not a factor; the sweet wines come instead from late-harvested fruit picked from October onwards and in some years as late as January.

The plantings are dominated by the local Gros Manseng and Petit Manseng, and Henri has also set about reviving three other native varieties: Camaralet de Lasseube, Lauzet and Courbu Blanc. All vine work is done by hand and the fruit is hand-harvested and hand-sorted. Picking is into small baskets, the dry wines get some skin contact, and fermentation runs in stainless steel for the entry-level wines and seasoned oak for the rest, with extended lees contact and an élevage of anywhere from five months to two years. Vines are planted at 8,000 to the hectare; farming is described as approaching organic. Around 110,000 bottles a year.