Clairette de Die
Clairette de Die is an appellation for sparkling wine in the middle section of the large wine-growing region of the Rhône . The vineyards are located in 31 municipalities east of Crest in the immediate vicinity of the eponymous town of Die on the Drôme tributary on the orographic left side of the Rhone . Some vineyards reach as far as the Vercors mountain range . Since March 26, 1993, the wine-growing region has the status of an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée(also called AOC for short). On December 30, 1942, there was an appellation of the same name. At that time, the manufacturing processes for the sparkling wine were not specified and a white still wine was also available under the name Clairette de Die. Therefore, the appellation was reorganized in 1993 and the Crémant de Die and Coteaux de Die appellations were founded within the same region .
In 1998, 71,644 hectoliters of sparkling wine were produced on 1,232 hectares of vineyards.
Viticulture was already practiced in the region in Roman times. This is testified by the historian Pliny the Elder , who described the region's wine in 77 in his work Naturalis historia .
The sparkling wine must be produced according to the rules of the méthode dioise ancestrale . The freshly pressed must is cooled to minus 3 ° C for about 48 hours before fermentation and then left to ferment at low temperatures. The not yet fully fermented, sweet and still wine is then drawn into bottles. At this point, the semi-fermented must still has a residual sugar content of at least 55 g / l. The wine ferments in the bottle for at least 4 months and reaches an alcohol content of around 7.5 % vol. With a residual sweetness of at least 35 g / l. After removing the yeast residues, the wine is poured into new bottles. Due to the residual sweetness, there is no dosage with shipping liqueur .
Approved grape varieties are Clairette Blanche and Muscat blanc à petits grains . Although it is the Clairette that gives the wine its name, the proportion of nutmeg grapes must be at least 75%. This gives the Clairette de Die its extremely fruity nutmeg note.
Approved municipalities
Aix-en-Diois , Aouste-sur-Sye , Aubenasson , Aurel , Barsac , Barnave , Beaufort-sur-Gervanne , Châtillon-en-Diois , Die , Espenel , Laval-d'Aix , Luc-en-Diois , Menglon , Mirabel-et-Blacons , Molières-Glandaz , Montclar-sur-Gervanne , Montlaur-en-Diois , Montmaur-en-Diois , Piégros-la-Clastre , Ponet-et-Saint-Auban , Pontaix , Poyols , Recoubeau-Jansac , Saillans , Saint-Benoit-en-Diois , Saint-Roman , Saint-Sauveur-en-Diois , Sainte-Croix , Suze-sur-Crest , Vercheny and Véronne .
literature
- Benoît France (ed.): Grand Atlas des Vignobles de France . Éditions SOLAR publishing house, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-263-03242-8 .
- Pierre Galet : Cépages et Vignobles de France . Lavoisier Publishing House, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7430-0585-8 .
- John Livingstone-Learmonth: The wines of the Northern Rhône . University of California Press, Berkeley CA 2005, ISBN 0-520-24433-8 .
- Jancis Robinson (Ed.): The Oxford Wine Lexicon . Hallwag, Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-8338-0691-5 .