Wines made from Colombard grapes of Crémant de Bourgogne
Discover the best wines made with Colombard as a single variety or as a blend of Crémant de Bourgogne.
Colombard is one of the oldest grape varieties in the Charentes. This golden white grape variety is a cross between Chenin and Gouais. The young leaves of colombard are yellow with bronze patches. The adult leaves may be three-lobed or whole, depending on the variety. Its branches are cottony. The bunches of this variety are thick and cylindrical. Its elliptical berries are medium-sized. They change color until they ripen, ranging from greenish white to golden yellow. Colombard is associated with an average budding. It is particularly susceptible to leafhoppers, grape worms, mites, mildew, powdery mildew and gray mold. It is also sensitive to water stress, but is not very sensitive to wind. It ripens late in the second half of the year. There are a dozen approved clones of Colombard, the best known of which are 608, 607 and 606. This variety produces a full-bodied, fine white wine. Aromas of lime, nectarine, boxwood, citrus and exotic fruits are released.
Recognized in 1975, the appellation crémant-de-bourgogne replaced the Sparkling wines whose quality was not very homogeneous. Its geographical area, very vast, covers more than 300 communes, of Châtillonnais, with the borders of Champagne auboise, with Beaujolais included. The AOC imposes conditions of harvest and elaboration as strict as those of the Champagne region and copied on this one, the difference residing in the duration of Maturation on lees, which is of nine months minimum, against twelve for the champagne. The Grape varieties used also bring Crémant-de-Bourgogne closer to its illustrious Champagne model, for although all the varieties of the region can be used, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are favoured.
No yeast; no wine. Yeast is the only ‘wine maker’ in that sense. Imagine a world in which we had to content ourselves with tasting and drinking grape juice: sweet, with no ability to alter our mood, and largely undifferentiated in sensual terms. Our interest would evaporate. Mysteriously, only yeast can unlock personality and even origin in must. Unlock? Perhaps even that word is misconceived. Yeast is, with grape juice, the progenitor of wine. It is not neutral, abstract, a twinkly wand that tr ...
The Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB) revealed that the Bordeaux 2021 vintage was 20% below the region’s 10-year average. Bud burst came earlier than usual amid very sunny weather in March, and many young buds were then destroyed by severe frosts, which hammered the region in early April. It means that producers will have just 503 million bottles from the 2021 vintage, which is significantly below average. The region’s sweet whites, including Sauternes, suffered the sharpest y ...
Layers of colour in the sky before me: indigo, peach, salmon. In the rear-view mirror, the gold was catching fire. As I drove down through the lonely, Mistral-chilled vines of Babeau-Bouldoux towards nearby St-Chinian, I was thinking about what Christine Deleuze of Clos Bagatelle had just said. ‘When you came to visit 10 years ago,’ she reminded me, ‘you said we needed to wait another decade for a market breakthrough. Today you’ve said we need to wait another decade or two. So when, exactly, wil ...