The grapes of Gaillac

While the rest of France replanted Merlot and Cabernet, Gaillac kept its own grapes — and revived several thought lost. It's this handful of varieties, and the stubborn few who saved them, that give these wines their identity.

Grape	Colour	What it makes
Mauzac	White	Ancestral sparkling, oxidative "vin de voile"
Loin de l'Œil	White	Ample, floral whites, sometimes sweet
Ondenc	White	Sweet wines (Vin d'Autan)
Verdanel	White	Confidential, revived
Braucol	Red	Structured, peppery reds for keeping
Duras	Red	Supple, spicy reds
Prunelart	Red	Dense red, revived medieval grape

The whites

Mauzac

Gaillac's white workhorse. It makes the bubbles of the ancestral method — the old Gaillac "perlé" — and it's the grape left to age under a veil of yeast for oxidative whites with apple and walnut notes. Green apple, freshness, an unapologetic rusticity. It comes in several forms: Mauzac vert, roux, noir.

Loin de l'Œil

The name ("len de l'el" in Occitan) comes from the long stalk that holds the bunch far from the vine's bud. A fragile, touchy grape, nearly lost, saved in extremis. It gives ample, floral whites, sometimes sweet. You'll find it almost nowhere else.

Ondenc

The grape of the sweet wines. Dried on the vine by the Autan wind, picked berry by berry in November, it concentrates a rare sugar — the secret of Vin d'Autan. Almost gone after phylloxera, revived in Gaillac.

Verdanel

A forgotten native, replanted by a stubborn few. Confidential, almost invisible on the maps, but it's the whole spirit of Gaillac: keeping what others tore out.

The reds

Braucol

Also known as Fer Servadou. Gaillac's red with character: structured, peppery, on black fruit and blackcurrant, with enough tannin to age. It often forms the backbone of the blended reds.

Duras

Braucol's companion, lending it suppleness. Softer, spicy, on pepper and red fruit. Not to be confused with the area of the same name: here, it's a grape, and it's always been from Gaillac.

Prunelart

The ancestor. A medieval grape thought lost, a relative of Côt (Malbec). A dense, structured red with black-fruit and spice aromas. Its replanting, in the 1980s, is one of the vineyard's great rescues.

Bringing back the lost

Several of these grapes came close to vanishing. Prunelart, Verdanel and Ondenc had all but disappeared when Robert Plageoles, in the 1980s, set out to track them down vine by vine, replant them and vinify them on their own — rather than drown them in a blend that would have erased their character. As much ampelography as winemaking, the work has since been taken up by other growers. It's thanks to that stubbornness that, in Gaillac today, you can still drink grapes the rest of France forgot.

To taste them at the source, two houses have made it their mission: Domaine Plageoles, guardian of the ancestral grapes, and Domaine de Causse Marines, on the biodynamic and natural-wine side. All of it makes up the Gaillac AOC.