Madiran regional profile plus top 10 wines worth seeking out

Buried in a deeply rural corner of southwest France, Madiran still languishes in a partial obscurity it doesn’t really deserve. Its remote location is a handicap, and so is the fact that its flagship grape variety is the notoriously tannic Tannat.

That means its wines can be very long-lived wines, but they hardly have the immediate appeal of, say, a Beaujolais or a Chinon. It’s a demanding variety that results in demanding wines, a style not necessarily valued in an age when most wine is consumed within hours of purchase.

Scroll down for Stephen Brook’s top 10 Madiran wines

By the 1980s many producers were giving up on Tannat, and also abandoning the best hillside vineyards. It was easier to cultivate higher yielding varieties such as Merlot, and to plant on the fertile valley floors that in truth were better suited to crops such as corn. Madiran was at risk of losing its identity.

One local boy, Alain Brumont, rode to the rescue, focusing on Tannat from outstanding sites that he was able to purchase for a song, as no one else wanted them. He also introduced the practice of ageing his best wines in a high proportion of new barriques. It helped that Brumont believed in himself, to an almost fanatical degree, and that it didn’t take long for French wine critics to realise that his wines were extraordinary. His 1985 pure-Tannat Montus Reserve received huge acclaim, and he has never looked back. Today he farms or controls 300 hectares in the region, and produces a wide range of wines of exceptional quality.

He’s not alone, of course. Other estates, and even the local co-operatives, were quick to realise that by focusing on quality and typicity, Brumont was able to attain high prices for his wines. So they followed suit but, not everyone had Brumont’s skill, and some wines were overripe, over-extracted, and over-oaked. Occasionally even Brumont’s wines would veer in that direction.

But overall standards rose swiftly. Perhaps it was a coincidence but Brumont’s neighbour Patrick Ducournau devised a technical aid to vinification called micro-oxygenation. The idea was to inject the wines, either during fermentation or during the ageing process, with controlled doses of oxygen. The consequence was to soften the tannins, reduce any greenness in the wine, and make the finished products more accessible in their youth.

Micro-oxygenation was a runaway success. I still have the scientific papers that Ducournau gave me over 20 years ago. I couldn’t follow the details but I wasn’t surprised when a few years later the process had become a worldwide phenomenon. Unfortunately it proved open to abuse, allowing producers to over-crop and thus pick under ripe grapes, resulting in green wines that could then be ‘corrected’ by micro-oxygenation. Today it’s falling from fashion, at least for prestigious wines such as Bordeaux, but the publicity Ducournau gained from it also helped bring Madiran’s wines to international attention.

Despite Brumont’s enormous success and prestige, Madiran still remains under the radar. This is strange, as Madiran hits so many of the right buttons. Quality from the best estates is high, while prices remain reasonable. The wines have structure and longevity, yet most producers offer simpler wines, often blending Tannat with other varieties, with more immediate approachability.

See Stephen Brook’s top 10 Madiran wines

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