Limoux
Limoux wine is produced around the city of Limoux in Languedoc in southwestern France.
Climate and geography
The Limoux wine region is located in the eastern foothills of the Pyrénées in southern France, south of the fortified city of Carcassonne. The classified vineyards are all in the Aude département, in the general vicinity of Limoux, west of the Corbières hills. The climate is dominated by the strong winds of the region, the dry, Atlantic vent cers and the warm, Mediterranean vent marin. The Mediterranean climate of the region has more Atlantic influences than other Languedoc wine regions.[1] The soil in the area is rocky with clay, sandstone and limestone, creating distinct terroir throughout the region depending on the degree of Mediterranean or Atlantic influences and clay composition in the soil.
The unique topography of the region and combination of Mediterranean and Atlantic influences has created ideal conditions for the slow, even ripening of the region’s white wine grapes. Despite being located at a southerly latitude, the climate is cooler and moister than in most of the wine regions in southern France. Its location in the foothills of the Pyrénées allows the vineyards to be at a higher elevation, and planted in optimal locations on hillsides.
History
Records show that Livy traded in non-sparkling white wines from Limoux as far back as the Roman occupation of the region.
Blanquette de Limoux is considered to be the first sparkling white wine produced in France, created long before the Champagne region became world-renowned for the sparkling wine Champagne. The first textual mention of “blanquette”, from the Occitan expression for “the small white”, appeared in 1531 in papers written by Benedictine monks at an abbey in Saint-Hilaire. They detail the production and distribution of Saint-Hilaire’s blanquette in cork-stoppered flasks. The region’s location, north of the Cork Oak forest of Catalunya, gave Limoux producers easy access to the material needed to produce secondary fermentation in the flask, which produces the bubbles necessary for sparkling wine.
Local lore suggests that Dom Pérignon learned how to produce sparkling white wine while serving in this Abbey before moving to the Champagne region and popularizing the drink,[4] but this is almost certain to be false since Dom Pérignon was involved with improving Champagne’s still wines, and not the sparkling ones.
In 1938, Blanquette de Limoux became one of the first AOCs established in the Languedoc region (1936 AOCs included Muscat de Frontignan in the Languedoc and Rivesaltes, Maury, and Banyuls in the Roussillon). While the classification is recent, the wine itself has long been a traditional apéritif or dessert accompaniment in the area.
In recent decades, appellation rules have been relaxed to allow an increased use of international grape varieties, which have partially replaced Mauzac.