Blanquette méthode ancestrale

How it is made

The difference from Blanquette de Limoux lies in the fermentation. Blanquette de Limoux is made from a finished base wine that undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle. In the méthode ancestrale the first and only fermentation is completed in the bottle.¹ No second fermentation is started, so the bubbles come from the same fermentation that turns the grape sugar into alcohol. The general principle is described on the ancestral method page.

Grape

The wine is based on Mauzac, which INAO calls an ancestral variety.¹ The exact Mauzac share required (commonly said to be 100%) was not verified in the texts we could open.

Area and volume

The wine comes from the same 41 communes of the Aude as the other Limoux sparkling wines.¹ For the 2016 harvest, 5,334 hl were declared under the "Méthode ancestrale" mention.² For comparison, Blanquette de Limoux declared 31,414 hl and Crémant de Limoux 45,493 hl in the same year, so the ancestral wine is the smallest of the three.²

History

Limoux sparkling wines based on Mauzac were recognised as an appellation in 1938.^3,1 An older story about the abbey of Saint-Hilaire and the year 1531 is a local tradition, not documented in the INAO texts; see Blanquette de Limoux.

What we could not verify

The current Limoux cahier des charges could not be located. Residual sugar, pressure and the minimum time before release for this wine are therefore not given here.