The wine producers of Irouléguy share a common fault which could become a quality: stubbornness.
In fact what is need is tenacity, but also a degree of passion and the courage to deal with the steep slopes of the Arradoys and Jara regions in short giving this little mountain vineyard its noble letters (i.e. A.O.C).
The vines of Basse-Navarre were established in the 14th century by the monks of the abbey of Roncevaux and represented a significant part of cultivation in the area up to 1906.
The vineyard then extended to 470 hectares. After this prosperous period, Irouléguy fell into a period of decline, punctuated by a succession of catastrophic harvests, followed by the phylloxera crisis.
With the impetus of a handful of resillient wine producers, the vineyard slowly came back out of the shadows, initially with the creation of the syndicate for the support of the Irouléguy wines (in 1945), and then with the contsruction of the Cave Coopérative (1952) and culminating in the achivement of the appellation d'origine contrôlée (A.O.C.), in 1970.
