What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Crémant de Limoux in France
- Latitude
- 42.9°–43.1° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 186 m to 426 m
- Delimited vineyard land
- 15,006 ha
Covers the same area as
Limoux
Worked out from the boundaries (smallest container first). Uses the delimited parcels where INAO publishes them.
The delimited vineyard parcels themselves, so the shape is patchy: only land within them may grow the wine. Boundary: INAO parcel delimitation (Licence Ouverte); nearby parcels drawn as one block, with less detail for larger appellations. Country outlines: Natural Earth. Dots on the zone map are the vineyard points used for climate.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Crémant de Limoux must meet.
Blend rules
Crémant de Limoux (rosé)
- 60–90% chardonnay / chenin · Main grape
- ≥ 30% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≥ 10% Chenin Blanc · Allowed
- ≥ 15% Pinot Noir · Allowed
- ≤ 20% mauzac · Allowed
At least 12 months' ageing; release from 12 months after tirage.
Blend rules
Crémant de Limoux
- 60–90% chardonnay / chenin · Main grape
- ≥ 30% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≥ 10% Chenin Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 40% mauzac / pinot noir · Allowed
- ≤ 20% mauzac · Allowed
At least 12 months' ageing; release from 12 months after tirage.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
3 varieties · Crémant de Limoux (rosé), Crémant de Limoux (white), Crémant de Limoux
Chenin Blanc, Mauzac, Pinot Noir
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille Guyot simple; taille courte
Permitted, with limits
Irrigation
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.0 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,496 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 281 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.0 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,496
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 530 mm
- Of 886 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 150 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 200 m; Vineyard point 2, 208 m; Vineyard point 3, 385 m; Vineyard point 4, 282 m; Vineyard point 5, 331 m), moved to each point's height from the model's terrain. Indices that need daily data are not captured yet. How the climate figures are made.
Lower confidence:Monthly reanalysis in moderately complex terrain; not yet checked against a weather station.
Closest climates in the database
Picked by the data, not by hand: the profiles nearest on season warmth (counted twice), degree days, rain, ripening-month nights and day–night range. Neighbours within 30 km are left out, as they share the same weather.
1. ZalaVery similarCompared with Crémant de Limoux: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. SomlóiVery similarCompared with Crémant de Limoux: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. ΖίτσαVery similarCompared with Crémant de Limoux: same season warmth, similar rain.
Growing-season temperature
Growing degree days
Growing-season rain
03 · Year by year
35 vintages
Each column is one growing season: heat above or below the 1991–2020 average, and rain at harvest. Pick a year for the details.
Warmer than averageCooler than averageHarvest rain (Sep–Oct)Average harvest rain, 150 mm
2025
- Growing-season temp.
- Growing degree days
- Harvest rain
- Growing-season rain
- September nights
- Hot days and frosts
Seasons are labelled by harvest year (April–October). Year-to-year changes from ERA5-Land; tested against station records in Alto Adige (r = 0.94 for season temperature at Bolzano). Rain varies more locally, so treat single-season rain with some caution. Vintage ratings, harvest dates and frost or hail events have places in the data model but are not loaded yet.
04 · Where the numbers come from
Sources
- A geospatial inventory of regulatory information for wine protected designations of origin in Europe · Candiago et al., Scientific Data 9, 394 (2022); Eurac Research · CC0
- Quality wines in Italy and France: a dataset of PDO specifications · figshare 25393261 · CC BY 4.0
- ERA5-Land monthly averaged data (reanalysis-era5-land-monthly-means) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), Climate Data Store · CC BY 4.0 (Copernicus licence)
- OpenStreetMap vineyard areas (landuse=vineyard), from Geofabrik country extracts · OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0
- Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (AWS open data tiles) · European Space Agency / Copernicus · Copernicus DEM licence
- Cahier des charges: Crémant de Limoux (Cahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine contrôlée Crémant de Limoux - BO n°42 du 19 octobre 2017) · Ministère de l'Agriculture (Bulletin officiel), as linked by INAO · Official act
- Délimitation parcellaire des AOC viticoles de l'INAO · Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité (INAO), via data.gouv.fr · Licence Ouverte / Open Licence (Etalab)
- Appellation nesting worked out from boundaries (pipeline/build_nesting.py) · Vinous, from the Eurac PDO boundaries · CC0 (source data)
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: Grape percentages are the blend (cuvée) rules; holdings must also plant at least 50% chardonnay, 10–40% chenin, at most 30% pinot noir and 20% mauzac. Hand harvesting, whole-bunch pressing and at most 100 litres of must per 150 kg of grapes; yields above 87 hl/ha lose the appellation; bottled wines may not exceed 13% actual alcohol if the must was enriched; at least 3.5 bar pressure after disgorging.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.