Montréal is also the nearest village to the impressive Domaine de Pellehaut, run by brothers Martin and Matthieu Beraut. Just to the south, one of the highlights of this tour is the ancient town of Montréal, near which, in the mosaics at the Gallo-Roman villa of Séviac, you can see evidence of Gascon vineyards dating back 1,600 years. Seek out what’s said to be the only round square in France, in the village of Fourcès.
The most northerly tour is based around the town Condom, which is also the centre of Ténarèze Armagnac production (Route des Vins et des Vallons du Pays). The suggested wine routes of Gascony offer a mix of delights, not just vinous ones. Some offer supper, and this home cooking is likely to be one of the best ways to experience the rich and rustic cuisine of Gascony where duck and goose reign supreme be it in cassoulet, magret de canard, confit or foie gras. Plaimont’s wine growers now run more than 25 very reasonably priced gîtes and chambres d’hôtes across the region. Some of these are stunning, and most are located in glorious, tranquil settings, which helps bring people and money into an area where there was little attractive accommodation in the past. It has also encouraged and helped finance its wine growers in redeveloping suitable buildings as rural gîtes. It has devised three wine routes centred on Condom, St-Mont and Madiran – any one of which could be the basis for a day’s touring – in different parts of the region where its members’ wines are produced. The Plaimont cooperative has done much to re-invigorate the region over the past two decades – not just by adopting practices that have racheted up the quality of its wines, but also by investing in the social fabric. This apparent isolation has helped it to retain a strongly rural, individual personality that is evident in its rich and rustic cuisine. It still has no major cities, and motorways pass by on the region’s peripheries in the north and south of the region. Cheap air travel into Pau and Toulouse has only made this wild and beautiful rolling countryside (slightly) more accessible. Thanks to this winemaking renaissance, Gascony has more to offer the wine tourist than ever before. As a whole, the region now produces nearly as much white wine as Alsace. These three wineries were responsible for the trio of trophy-winning wines, but there are others too. Both larger companies such as Château Tariquet (known for its whites) and the enterprising Producteurs Plaimont Coopérative – which also makes quality red wines in the Madiran, Béarn and St-Mont ACs to the west – and smaller producers such as Domaine de Pellehaut have helped put Côtes de Gascogne on the map. While Armagnac remains Gascony’s best-known export, it is the success of wine that has set in train a rejuvenation of the region, creating jobs and helping stem depopulation. Today, nearly two thirds of the 13,000 hectares of vineyards in Gers are devoted to Côtes de Gascogne wines rather than Armagnac. It remains predominantly a white wine stronghold, with reds and rosé accounting for only 10% of production.Īt the recent Top 100 Vins de Pays awards, in which wines from all over France competed, three of the six trophy-winning whites – including the ‘best white of show’ – came from the Gers department, the modern equivalent of the ancient duchy of Gascony at the centre of the southwest. This vineyard, only formally established in 1982, is in the same defined region where white grape varieties like Ugni Blanc and Colombard were planted principally to make Armagnac. But the most important by far in terms of volume, profile and exports are the vins de pays des Côtes de Gascogne. There are some 22 vins de pays in the wider southwest zone that stretches from the Pyrénées, which define its southern border, up to the Massif Central in the northeast.
Gascony is a region that encompasses 18 separate appellations, yet in terms of exports, its wine credentials have been re-established over the past decade or so not by ACs like Madiran, but by the quality of its vins de pays. The southwest corner of France, the land between Toulouse and the Atlantic coastline, boasts the fourth largest generic wine AC in the country in terms of production and sales. Tucked away in southwest France, with no major cities, airports or motorways, Gascony is the perfect place to get away from it all – once you’ve got there yourself.
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