Jurançon Moelleux: Domaine Bellegarde 'Cuveé Thibault' 2020
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A rich, powerful Jurançon wine with intense aromas of dried fruit and grilled nuts and a persistent palate of apricots and peaches with a rich, honeyed finish. Brilliant with hard cheeses or fruit-based puddings.
This is the Labasse family’s flagship sweet cuvée, from 100% Petit Mansang - 'Cuvée Thibault' is named after Pascal Labasse's eldest son. This lightly-sweet wine has sufficient fruit concentration to age gracefully; what the French term a ‘vin de garde’. Bright gold in colour with mandarin and confit fruit aromas, it has a wonderfully rich yet refreshingly balanced character. As it evolves, flavours of peach and exotic fruit come to the fore.
| Style | White Wine, Moelleux, Full-bodied, Non Sparkling |
|---|---|
| Wine Region | Midi, Jurançon |
| Grape Variety (Cépage) | Petit Manseng |
| Food & Wine Matching | Cheese, Dessert, Fruit |
| Viticulture | Non-Organic |
| Vintage | 2020 |
| Cellarage | This wine is pleasant to drink when young but has the structure and complexity to age well in the long term. Cellar for up to 10 to 15 years. Serve lightly chilled and if possible, decant for 5 to 6 hours before drinking. |
| Vinification | From a 9ha plot on south-facing limestone-clay slopes. Handpicked late-harvest berries are harvested in late November and fermented in carefully-selected oak barrels. De-stalked grapes are pneumatically pressed then vinified and matured in barriques. Fined and filtered before bottling. Extremely high levels of natural sugars from air-dried, raisin-like grapes ensure an excellent concentration of sweet fruit flavours in the finished wine. |
| Alcohol By Volume (%) | 13 |
Domaine Bellegarde (Pascal Labasse)
The historic Béarnais appellation of Jurançon lies to the south and west of the city of Pau and is for white wines only based on Gros Manseng, Petit Manseng, Camarelet and Petit Courbu. Domaine Bellegarde, with 12 hectares under vine, can be found 20 kilometres west of Pau outside the village of Monein and has been in the hands of Pascal Labasse since 1985. The domaine was first acquired by the Labasse family following the return of Pascal's grandfather from New Orleans in 1920. The family had originally emigrated due to the phylloxera epidemic, which destroyed most of the vines in France (although a few of the vines at higher altitude are pre-phylloxera). His son Maxime joined the family domaine in 2020 and, like his father, is passionate about their wines - they craft tangy, dry whites and fine sweet wines that drink well from bottling but that can age well over many years.
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