To intend to
speak about the Tannat type of vine (or tanat), it is necessary to refer to the
investigation of the intendant of Guyenne Dupre of St Maur in 1783-1784 in the
western south of Gers. What is then remarkable, it is the small number of type
of vines met.
In red, one
meets only two of them, whose tanat "a black grape, its sheet round, is pricked
little and of red color". It is probably then of recent introduction (about
1700?) because it corresponds better to the ploughings modern, a need for
increase in the productivity of the vine and to the taste of the inhabitants of
the Pyrenean valleys, principal consuming Madiran of the time.
Bunches
cylindrical, compact, with grains blue-blacks with thick skin, coloured. Cest a
late and productive type of vine.
It likes gravelly earth and sandy. With maturity, it gives fruity wines (raspberry),
acids, constructed. It gives an alcoholic wine, coloured, acid, very rich in
tannins, highly-strung person, astringent. Ask for an ageing of several years to
soften itself. Sink, very bouqueté, firmly constructed, rough in its youth
especially when the tannat dominates. It gives
wines rich in contrasts. One finds there much fruity as well as various flavours
of which exotic wood, cinnamon and tobacco. But they are also very tannic wines
and of a marked acidity. After a passage in wood barrels, and when the tanins
swelled the tannat transforms into wine of an intense red, of a great complexity
and growing old formidably well. It should be drunk from 5 to 10
years of age, confined well with raised dishes and fats which prove to be the
ideal to mask the hardness of youth of these wines. Kitchen of the south-west of
France y Marie with wonder.
It encépagement belongs to Béarn wines, Cahors, Côtes of Brulhois, Madiran,
Irouléguy, Tursan, Côtes of Saint Mount.
But the wine where it is expressed best is Madiran (40
to 60 % of encépagement). It is at the base of the originality of this wine of
soil rich in tannin and the framework of a high-class wine of guard gives him.
The wines 100% Tannat same are tolerated for the great
vintages intended for ageing out of barrels . Indeed one minimized the
tannat at the time of the creation of the AOC because of his rusticity. Today
thanks to progress of the vine growing and oenology, with the work of certain
wine growers, the tannat gained its letters of nobility.
It is on the other hand little known in France which it became the principal
type of vine of Uruguay, with a production higher than that of French Tanat. It
was introduced in 1870 by immigrants Basques (Pascual Harriague) and was
transformed into "national type of vine" adapted perfectly on the ground and the
climate buildings. It is called besides over there Harriague. Red wines with
body but without excessive tannin are produced in several departments -
Canelones, Montevideo, San José and Maldonaldo. The volcanic ground and the very
lenient climate, in particular the maritime breezes, make that the vinsd'
Uruguay have a smoothness which lack Brazilian wine majority subject under more
difficult climatic conditions. The introduction of the
type of vine "Tannat", there is more than one century, in Uruguay, led the
French agronomic national Institute and its equivalent uruguayen, the INAVI, to
conclude a convention in order to carry out a genetic experimentation and
research program on this type of vine.
En 2002, un colloque fut d'ailleurs organisé avec
nos amis uruguayens à Madiran autour du Tannat (Daniel Vergnes,
Chambre d’Agriculture des Pyrénées-Atlantiques « La conservation du patrimoine
génétique du Tannat », <<Suivi de
maturité polyphénolique du Tannat »...)
