THE rolling hills of Gascony, as my friend Etienne de Resseguier delights in calling them, are a land of sunflowers, ducks, corn and vines, to which the high Pyrenees form a dramatic backdrop to the south.

This is Armagnac country. Whether it or Cognac is the world’s finest brandy is the stuff of heated debate amongst connoisseurs; but the indisputable and sad fact is that the number of lovers of fine spirits is steadily falling. Brandy makers in Cognac and Armagnac have been forced to diversify to make ends meet.

One fairly obvious option has been to make table wine. In the contest between the two regions to make the best-selling wine, Gascony is winning hands down. It’s not that the Cognac county wines, Vin de Pays Charentais, are poor, far from it, but in their reliance on international big names like Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, they face steep competition.

Gascony has had the good sense to resist the temptation to replant with varieties everyone has heard of to make wine sold as Vin de Pays des Côtes de Gascogne. Instead, they chose to make the most of what was already there, and to give a starring role to a few largely unknown local varieties.

Colombard is the mainstay of some of the most successful blends. It’s a white wine grape, which needs to be handled carefully in order to release its fresh, juicy, peachy flavours. In the past, with less refined winemaking techniques, its charms remained hidden and it was prized mainly as a suitably neutral and rather acidic base wine for distillation. Its crisp acidity and relatively low alcohol are now being seen as just what’s needed to produce light, crisp, refreshing and flavourful white wines, ideal for today’s market. And the success of Colombard in Gascony shows what might also be possible further north in the Charentes – the original home of the variety.

It is sometimes sold as a single variety, but may also be blended perfectly satisfactorily with the genuinely uninteresting Ugni Blanc. The stronger personality of Colombard shines through.

More interesting still are the twin local varieties, Gros Manseng and Petit Manseng. Gros Manseng yields more and is the preferred choice for dry wine. Petit Manseng makes some of the world’s greatest sweet wines a little further south and west in the appellations of Jurançon and Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh.

Wine from one of both of the Mansengs is vibrantly fruity, in a peachy, citrus kind of way, with a hint of green plums and maybe herbs, and it is always deliciously tangy.

Given that wines like this are just what people are looking for, it’s no surprise to learn that the Gers, the region at the heart of Vin de Pays de Côtes de Gascogne production, now makes more white wine at Vin de Pays level than any other department in France. Around 90% of all Vin de Pays des Côtes de Gascogne is white. Another measure of its huge commercial success is that around three-quarters of it is exported, with Britain one of the thirstiest and most enthusiastic markets.

And producers, who, a generation ago, made their living almost entirely from Armagnac, have found a whole new lease of life through table wine. The Grassa family, who own the region’s largest single estate of around a thousand hectares, are particularly successful. Their ‘Tariquet’ brand is very much flavour of the month in the bistros of Paris and is available, by the glass, in many other restaurants around France – a shrewd move, when strict drink-drive laws have resulted in a massive drop of wine sales by the bottle in French eateries.

Sweet wines are an especially big hit, surprising folk who imagined that anything sweet would also be sickly, by their mouth-watering, juicy freshness. The richest wine in their range, Tariquet ‘Dernières Grives’ 2008 is available in the UK from the Wine Society (£14.50 www.thewinesociety.com).

There’s a wide choice of dry white wines from Gascony in the shops. One of my favourites is the super value Pugalet 2010, £4.99 at Waitrose – a classic, refreshing blend of Colombard and Ugni Blanc (sold as Vin de Pays du Gers). Some of the best, including my wine of the week, are made by the enterprising group of five co-operatives that sell that wine under the ‘Plaimont’ brand. As the newly-appointed European export director for Plaimont, Etienne de Resseguier is understandably keen to promote his wines, but as a Gascon to the tip of his ever-present beret, I have no doubt that his pride is genuine and not simply the result of his marketing training.

Plaimont supply wines to Marks & Spencer as well as Majestic. Etienne would love to introduce more red and rosé Vin de Pays des Côtes de Gascogne, but good as these are, I suspect it will continue to be the crisp, dry whites that will sell best over here.