These wines are made in vineyards that lie east of Biarritz on the Atlantic coast just north of Spain. As we move south the land transforms, greener, lusher, the air fresher; the land rolls gently, and suddenly, “Jesus!” says Turin. It is as if the Pyrenees have materialized before you, a mass of astonishing peaks against crystalline and cobalt skies, stretching across the horizon. The car dips down below some hills, then swoops up again, and their imposing, steely beauty is breathtaking.
Late in the afternoon, under silken sunlight, we pull into our hotel in Pau, Le Fer à Cheval. It is an old relais with fruit trees—pear, cherry, apple, peach—and a barn, whose slight dilapidation and big, adorable Labrador make it all the more lovely.
The next morning, Turin and I set off for Domaine Castéra, in the town of Monein. With its manicured gardens and Basque architecture it looks like a pristine, idealized-medieval movie set. Christian Lihour, whose grandfather bought the place in 1895, shows us around with pride, pointing out some huge photos of the grapes (the Jurançon appellation has the right to use five varieties, but almost everyone plants only Petit Manseng and Gros Manseng) overripening beautifully on the vines, just like Sauternes. Lovely dark spots, shriveled and sweet and almost rotting. The flavor practically drips off the photo. But Lihour says firmly, “We try never to have botrytis.”
In the Sauternes region, he explains, they are able to use botrytis to shrivel the grapes because the climate is drier, so the fungus doesn’t hang around in the soil to rot the roots. “Here,” he said, “we use vendange tardive, late harvest, leaving this grape variety all spring, summer, and fall to ripen and sweeten.”
The tasting room is filled with oak barrels and the rush of the marvelous yeast smell. By law the Jurançon appellation may make only whites, but they can be either dry or sweet. Domaine Castéra’s Jurançon (unless there’s a sec in its name, a Jurançon wine is always a moelleux, “sweet”) is 7 euros per bottle (Turin murmurs, with raised eyebrows, “These prices are ridiculously low”), 100 percent Gros Manseng, and aged entirely in stainless steel.
“Lovely,” says Turin, and it is: not truly a sweet yet not a dry, hovering delightfully somewhere in between, bright as summer. (As we walk out, Turin muses darkly to me about his beloved Sauternes: “I’ll say this against Sauternes, they are profoundly saturnine wines, wintry. It’s like, if you listen to Jascha Heifetz play the violin and you’re a little stoned, you realize that it’s actually extremely melancholy.”)
Lihour, with a collegiality that impresses Turin, has directed us down the road to Domaine Bordenave, where Gisèle Bordenave gets out several bottles. The Harmonie is a 2001. “Not interesting,” says Turin, emptying his glass. But he stands inhaling the 1999 Cuvée des Dames and a 1999 Cuvée Savin. “That’s fabulous. Wonderful!” he says to Madame Bordenave. She just looks back, stoically. “The Savin is the more brutal of the two,” says Turin.
At one o’clock we finally find what seems like the one restaurant in Monein. Small French towns at lunchtime are the most deserted places on earth, but inside, L’Estaminet is packed, blue berets everywhere.
As we tuck into huge portions of garbure (a delicious Basque bean soup) and roast duck on the front terrace, Turin’s mind is still on the wine. “Absurdly,” he says, “people drink sweet whites with foie gras. A dreadful and very petit bourgeois tradition of having all the expensive things together. It’s a very naïve idea of luxury. In fact, foie gras goes well with Jack Daniel’s. One should have expensive things as often as one can afford them, but preferably separately so you can actually taste them, and also so you don’t drop dead from a heart attack.” He sips a glass of wine and adds, “Another mistake: drinking moelleux as dessert wines. At the end of a meal your nose is shot to hell anyway. This includes for perfumes.”
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