Petit Manseng

Identity

Petit Manseng makes sweet wine without noble rot. That is its singularity, and it is enough to set it apart from almost every other great sweet-wine grape in the world.

Where Sauternes, the Coteaux du Layon and Tokaj rely on Botrytis cinerea to concentrate the juice, Jurançon relies on wind. Petit Manseng has a thick skin, resists grey rot very well, and stays on the vine into November while the foehn dries it out. The fruit raisins where it hangs — that is passerillage — and the concentration happens without any fungus at all.

History and origin

A Pyrenean variety, it long had only half a known parentage, and that is still the case. The VIVC gives one marker-confirmed parent, Savagnin Blanc; the second remains unknown. It is exactly the shape of uncertainty carried in this corpus by Chenin Blanc and by Riesling — and Savagnin turns up each time, upstream of a great high-acid white.

Its recent trajectory is striking for a grape long confined to a corner of France: 32 hectares in 1958, 520 in 1998, 1,445 in 2018. It was rediscovered at the same time as Jurançon itself.

In the vineyard

It buds two days after Chasselas and ripens in the third period, four and a half weeks after it — late ripening that is an asset here rather than a risk, since the appellation's entire logic is to leave the fruit hanging well past technical ripeness.

Pl@ntGrape describes it as "a vigorous variety that must be pruned long and trellised", and "very resistant to grey rot". Its bunches and berries are very small, which mechanically raises the ratio of skin to juice. The Jurançon cahier des charges lays out the causal chain plainly: the local varieties "therefore show good resistance to grey rot and a strong aptitude for over-ripening", which "the southerly foehn wind that blows in autumn, bringing warmth and dry air" greatly encourages.

In the glass

A caveat first: this entry carries three descriptors where the corpus template asks for eight. Pl@ntGrape gives none — it stops at "naturally very aromatic sweet wines of great quality" — and the cahier des charges does not describe the wines aroma by aroma. The three kept here are avowed readings of how the wine is made, not a measured profile.

What is measured, by contrast, is the sugar, and the figure is remarkable. The cahier des charges sets minimum sugar richness, and it asks more of Petit Manseng than of the rest: 247 grams per litre of must, against 230 for the appellation's other varieties, for a minimum natural alcoholic strength of 14%. The "vendanges tardives" mention rises to 281 g/L and 17%, and is open only to Petit Manseng and Gros Manseng.

An appellation that demands more of its best grape than of the others: that is regulatory recognition of what it can do.

Beneath that sugar, the acidity stays very high. It is the whole balance of a sweet Jurançon, which never collapses into syrup.

Great terroirs

Jurançon, essentially, on the steep slopes and amphitheatres of the Béarn foothills. The cahier des charges describes "topoclimates highly favourable to the ripening and over-ripening of the grapes: sunshine, warmth, low humidity, rainwater carried off by runoff", on predominantly clay soils.

The work there is demanding, and it is written into the text: hand harvesting, by successive selective picks, from 2 November onwards for late-harvest wines, and raisining off the vine forbidden except in the heart of the plot — in other words, the fruit is not dried anywhere but where it grew.

What it gets confused with

Gros Manseng, obviously, with which it shares the appellation and the late-harvest mention. Gros has larger berries and carries most of the dry Jurançon; Petit, with its very small berries, goes further in sugar and makes the most concentrated sweet wines. The cahier des charges settles it in its own way: 247 g/L required of Petit, 230 of the others.

With Sauternes Semillon, the confusion is about the result, not the means: both make great sweet wines, but Semillon goes through noble rot and keeps its wax and saffron, where raisined Petit Manseng stays on dried fruit and a sharper acidity.