🍷 Blanquette de Limoux

Blanquette de Limoux is a French sparkling wine from around the town of Limoux in Languedoc, southern France. It is often called one of the oldest sparkling wines in the world.

The wine is built on a white grape, Mauzac. Its local name, “blanquette”, gave the wine its name. The vineyards lie in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where days are warm and cool air comes down from the mountains, which keeps the grapes fresh.

Blanquette is usually made by the traditional method: after the first fermentation the wine is bottled, and a second fermentation, which creates the bubbles, happens inside the bottle. A related wine nearby is made by the ancestral method. There the wine is bottled before the first fermentation has finished, and the bubbles come from the leftover sugar.

Blanquette de Limoux is a sparkling wine with a protected French name. Only wine made in the Limoux area under local rules may use it.