He knows every single pebble, has dug holes everywhere he says laughing, studied, analyzed every inch of his land ... Alain Brumont quickly realized that it was not at the bottom of the valley that it was happening but up there, on the slopes, where the pebbles from the old bed of the Adour lie. He was considered crazy in the early eighties, today he is consulted around the world. Starting from 17 hectares, his vineyards today covers 240. Alain Brumont has become an international reference, the master builder of the renaissance of Tannat and the upmarket development of Madiran.
First, there is the vine. Alain Brumont's philosophy is dictated by nature itself, it goes beyond the simple notion of biodynamics. Like the vine, he draws from the earth the resources he needs. As a child, he was already crisscrossing the vineyardn nourished by the scents and landscapes, building an intimate bond with the land he cherishes all his life. Traditionally in this region, families lived from polyculture. Vines, livestock, crops shared the land. Reproducing history, Alain Brumont has ensured from the beginning the self-sufficiency of his estate. The Brumont vineyards, which mainly lay around Château Bouscassé, historic cradle, and Château Montus, its “grand cru”, have become in 30 years an autonomous ecosystem, rich in biodiversity.
Alain Brumont takes to extrems his requirement for the most natural possible wine, that expresses all the qualities of the terroir by itself, by best exploiting the intrinsic qualities of the grape. His vines are protected from the neighbours and their treatments by woods that separate the plots. No input is used on the vines, no insecticide is applied. The water directly comes from the spring. Flora is preserved between the rows to favour biodiversity and the exchanges between the vines and their environment as much as possible. The vines whose rows all face 3 o'clock are thinned out so as the bunches have as much sun in the morning as in the end of the day, with shadow at the heatest moment. During growth, the bunches are counted and graded. During harvest, three sortings (manual, by vibration and optical) are fulfilled. And that is just a short summary of all the care provided by the team led by technical manager Fabrice Dubosc in the search for quality initiated by Alain Brumont.
On the cellar side, Tannat is a grape variety that needs to be tamed. Powerful, it has an extraordinary aging capacity nevertheless. Alain Brumont has managed to create exceptionally elegant wines based on Tannat. This grape has the immense advantage of not requiring fining because it produces few deposits. To refine and extract all the aromas of its wines, to refine them, they all mature in barrels for about 12 months for the traditional cuvees. The 100% Tannat are aged in new barrels for 24 months, even more than 4 years for the XL vintage. And to go further, Alain Brumont even uses barrels of 600 liters and has just installed large wooden tuns.
Always eager to make discover the power of Madiran and its iconic grape variety, and very connected with sommeliers from around the world, Alain Brumont welcomed at Château Bouscassé the president of the Hong Kong and China sommeliers association, Nelson Chow. For the Chinese expert he prepared a representative selection of the expressions of his terroir, in white and in red, to finish with several vintages of his premium wines Château Montus XL and Château Montus La Tyre, an exceptional plot on the highest point of Madiran.
Gascon tradition of good food and conviviality obliges, Alain Brumont invited Nelson Chow at his table with products grown on the estate and cooked by the chef of the estate. The highlight was the discovery for Nelson Chow, not of a wine, but of the traditional making of the prune croustade!
Sylvia van der Velden
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