The name announces the programme: Tannat is the tannin grape. An old variety of the Adour basin in the Pyrenean foothills, it is the backbone of Madiran — dark, fierce wines that for generations demanded a decade of patience. The taming came from within: in 1991 the Madiran grower Patrick Ducournau invented micro-oxygenation, feeding measured whispers of air to the young wine to soften its formidable structure.
The grape had already crossed the ocean. In the 1870s the Basque emigrant Pascual Harriague planted it in Uruguay, where it took his name and became the national grape. A champion of polyphenols beloved of cardiologists, Tannat remains what it always was — dark and magnificent beside a confit de canard.