Petit Manseng

Petit Manseng is the great white grape of Jurançon, in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, prized for turning intensely honeyed, tropical dessert wines of piercing sweetness held in balance by a spine of searing acidity. A thick-skinned, small-berried Vitis vinifera variety, it is famous for passerillage — the grapes are left to shrivel and raisin on the vine deep into autumn rather than being touched by noble rot, concentrating their sugar while keeping their nerve. The result is a golden, unctuous wine bursting with candied pineapple, mango, apricot and honey, cut by a citrus-and-mineral tang that stops it cloying. Increasingly it is also vinified bone-dry, giving aromatic, full-bodied whites of the same exotic personality, and it has become a signature grape far from home in Virginia.