Vins de Tursan: The Secret Vineyard of the Landes | Food Tour de France
Vins de Tursan — the AOC wine of the Landes that most people outside the southwest of France have never heard of — is one of the most distinctive and most underrated appellations in the whole of French wine. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Hagetmau, right in the heart of Tursan wine country, and tells the full story of a vineyard that covers 450 hectares of hillside between the Landes forest and the first foothills of the Pyrenees, produces white wine from the baroque grape — a variety grown almost nowhere else in the world — and whose revival in the 1980s was driven almost entirely by one man. A chef who became a winemaker. A man who already had three Michelin stars and decided that wasn't enough. Michel Guérard, the founding father of cuisine minceur, came to Eugénie-les-Bains in the Landes and changed what people thought about Tursan forever.
The episode covers the full story of Tursan — from its first recognition as a wine of higher quality in 1958, through the fragmented landscape of small farm producers that earned it the name the secret vineyard of the Landes, to the AOC designation that came in 2011 following decades of work by Guérard and the producers who shared his belief in what this corner of the southwest could produce. The baroque grape that defines white Tursan — late-ripening, aromatic, structured, grown almost nowhere else on earth — is the heart of the appellation. Combined with Gros Manseng, Petit Manseng and Sauvignon Blanc in a blend that is specific to this landscape, it produces a white wine of genuine distinction that pairs beautifully with the fish of the Landes and the rich dishes of Gascon cuisine.
The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The Tursan episode connects directly to the garbure episode from Pau — white Tursan is one of the finest wine companions to the great slow-cooked soup of Gascony — and to the broader picture of southwest French food and drink culture this series has been building stage by stage. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.
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