After two weeks basking under clear skies, we arrived in Jurançon—France’s wettest wine-growing region. It was, of course, dripping with rain. Regardless, Maxime Salharang gave us a tour of his tiny three-hectare vineyard, where we met his ovine gardening team: a herd of mouton d’Ouessant. This small, short-tailed breed originated in Brittany, so they don’t mind the rainfall! Salharang graduated from Bordeaux in 2010, where he studied under the learned Denis Dubourdieu and progressed to the top of his class. For two years, he worked with the inimitable Yvonne Hegoburu at Domaine de Souch. At the same time, during the evenings and weekends, Maxime and his wife Lucie planted their home vineyard on a block of land in Gan belonging to Maxime’s grandfather, a short drive from Pau in Jurançon’s La Chapelle de Rousse commune.At the time, Maxime didn’t know he had stuck gold: laying under the topsoil, he found the ancient limestone called Trias marl, Jurançon’s rarest soil type. This soil type is partly responsible for some of the southwest’s raciest and most mineral-infused whites—wine that the French call as having toupet, real nerve. “We got lucky,” grins Maxime. Furthermore, the low pH of these soils acts as a natural preservative, meaning Salharang can work with low sulphur additions. To illustrate his point, he poured us a glass of his 2021 Comète, a wine that had been opened for a whole month; it tasted like it had been opened for all of one hour! The upcoming 2022 dry wines had yet to be blended, yet each component was bursting with energy, verve and compelling citrus and rocky characters. Salharang’s vineyard slopes east, and this is a terroir where the grapes struggle to reach 13°; you can taste the tension in every sip. We can’t wait to taste the finished wines. Even the domaine’s only moelleux—a cuvée named Phoenix—is packed with unusual energy and drive. Sometime after our visit, Clos Larrouyat won its second star in France’s leading wine guide. This is some going for a domaine that bottled its first wines in 2015. “Anyone who likes acidity and tension will find what they are looking for in the wines of Maxime and Lucie Salharang,” wrote La Revue du Vin de France. We would love to ship more of this grower’s wine, but with only three hectares of vines and no immediate plans to plant more, that won’t happen anytime soon. Maxime and Lucie want to remain small enough to do all the work themselves with their herd of mouton d’Ouessant. All we can say is that if you see this name on a wine list or merchant’s shelf, do not hesitate.