Tannat

Tannat is the most tannic wine grape in commercial cultivation, and the name says so. It comes from Madiran in south-west France, in the Gascon foothills of the Pyrenees, and its wines are dark, dense and formidably structured.

The tannin is a genuine technical problem. Traditional Madiran required years in barrel before it was approachable, and a great deal of it was simply too hard to enjoy. The solution, developed in Madiran in the 1990s by Patrick Ducournau, was micro-oxygenation: introducing tiny controlled quantities of oxygen into the wine during ageing to soften and polymerise the tannins. The technique was invented specifically for this grape and has since been adopted worldwide.

In Uruguay, where it was brought by Basque immigrants in 1870 and is called Harriague, it makes the national wine. The Atlantic-influenced climate and the deep clay soils give a softer, rounder, fruitier version than the French original, and Uruguay has built its entire wine identity on it.

The flavour is blackberry, black plum and damson, with liquorice, smoke, dark chocolate and a savoury, earthy depth. Acidity is high and colour is intense.

It has a widely reported association with cardiovascular health, owing to unusually high levels of procyanidins in the skins — a claim that has been made about red wine generally and which is better supported for this variety than for most, though it should not be mistaken for medical advice.