Limoux is a relatively New appellation (created in 2003) in the eastern Part of the Aude region of Southern France, which applies to both red and white wines. The vineyards extend around the town that gave it its name, in the foothills of the Pyrenees east of the Languedoc-Roussillon/corbieres">Corbières and south of Carcassonne. Historically, this region is best known for its Sparkling wines, which are produced and sold under the appellations of Blanquette de Limoux and Crémant de Limoux. The vineyards here are higher and cooler than those of any other appellation in the Languedoc-Roussillon, and also further away from the moderating temperature influences of the Mediterranean.
This leads Limoux and its surroundings to produce a style of wine quite different from other appellations. This includes neighbours such as the Corbières. In Limoux Rouge, red wines are made primarily from Merlot (at least 50% of any AOC Limoux blend), supplemented by a wide range of other French red varieties. The blend must include three grape varieties, with the two most important accounting for no more than 90% of the total.
Pinot Blanc is a grape variety that originated in Burgundy, mutated from Pinot Gris. Today, it is grown in Alsace where it is called klevner when blended with auxerrois. The continental climate, with its cold winters and hot summers, is particularly suited to pinot blanc. It is resistant to frost in winter and in summer, the roots draw the minerals it needs from the warm soil. Its bunches are made up of small berries with thick skins and melting pulp that produce fruity, spicy wines, balanced between acidity and alcohol. pinot blanc is also used for crémants and sparkling wines. Pinot Blanc is also used for Crémant and sparkling wines. It is widely grown in Italy, where it covers almost 7,000 hectares, and is also found in Germany, Austria, Canada and South Africa.
sparkling wines from the region of Limoux go well with generally quite well with dishes of shellfish, poultry or appetizers and snacks such as recipes of shrimp risotto with curry, home-made white pudding or ktipiti (greece).
On the nose in the region of Limoux often reveals types of flavors of microbio, oak or almonds and sometimes also flavors of honey, vegetal or toasty. In the mouth in the region of Limoux is a powerful with a nice vivacity and a fine and pleasant bubble.
The Roussillon is home to a range of wine styles, at varying price points. Sweet fortified wines (vin doux naturel) used to dominate production, with still dry wines (vin sec) in the minority. In the last 30 years, however, this has completely changed, and vin sec now makes up the majority (80%) of the Roussillon’s output. The recent Wines of Roussillon tasting, held in London, not only highlighted many good quality dry wines being produced, but also cemented the idea that Roussillon whites are ...
I was with some wine students in Chablis, visiting the affable Guillaume Michel of Domaine Louis Michel. The 2018 vintage in Chablis was prolific, though Guillaume’s team pruned the vines as hard as normal. Guillaume has a little more than a half-hectare of the smallest of the grands crus, Grenouilles (8.74ha in production in 2018, most of which is controlled by the cooperative La Chablisienne): delicious in 2018. And, after a year’s pruning and vine-tending, after hand-harvesting and scrupulous ...
The focus of the symposium, unsurprisingly, was on the challenges posed by climate change. As if to illustrate the immediacy of the threat, the symposium took place during a heatwave, with temperatures of over 40°C in Bordeaux and extreme weather events recorded across the coountry: parts of southwest France saw violent storms and winds of 112kph on the evening of 20 June, while vineyards across the Médoc and St-Emilion were damaged by hailstones ‘the size of golfballs’. As Olivier Bernard of D ...
