Domaine Laguille Côtes de Gascogne Gros Manseng

This Côtes de Gascogne comes from Domaine Laguille, a family property located in Saint-Amand, near Eauze, in the heart of Bas-Armagnac, in the Gers. This Gascon territory, renowned for its wines and brandies, enjoys a temperate oceanic climate, with hot summers and sunny late seasons. Gros Manseng, the emblematic grape variety of South-West France, develops great aromatic richness here while retaining lovely liveliness.

A family estate of winegrowers and distillers for several generations, Laguille devotes a medium-sweet cuvée to this Gascon grape variety to reveal its full aromatic richness. The wine is aged in tank, without any time in barrel, to highlight the freshness, finesse and radiance of the fruit. It is designed to be enjoyed young, as an aperitif or throughout the meal.

This wine reveals notes of mango, passion fruit, melon, yellow peach, candied lemon, grapefruit, orange blossom and hazelnut. Exotic fruit dominates an intense nose, complemented by citrus and a touch of dried fruit. The palate, medium-sweet and balanced, combines delicious sweetness with lovely freshness, and stretches out on an intense finish, lingering on the fruit.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.