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Montlouis (Montlouis-sur-Loire in full) is an appellation for various white wine styles from the commune of Montlouis, in the central Loire Valley of France. The Montlouis name is not particularly well known in international wine markets, being overshadowed by Vouvray just across the Loire. In fact, until the creation of the Montlouis appellation in 1938 the commune's wines were actually sold as Vouvray.
Like its larger, more-famous counterpart, Montlouis produces a wide range of white wine styles, but lacks an official labeling system to differentiate between them. The unifying factor is that all are made from Chenin Blanc, the main grape variety planted here.
Montlouis wines can be roughly divided into sweet, dry, still and sparkling. The sweetness levels are further broken down into Sec, Sec-Tendre, Demi-Sec and Moelleux, while the sparkling wines are categorised as Petillant or Mousseux. There is no legal definition of the difference between these two types of sparkling wine, but in terms of sweetness, any Montlouis wine labeled Sec is now legally required to contain less than 8g/L of residual sugar.
In terms of terroir, the vineyards of Montlouis enjoy gravelly, free-draining topsoils with a deep bed of tuffeau – the highly porous sedimentary rock that was deposited all over the Loire region in the Turonian era. The climate falls somewhere between maritime (the Atlantic Ocean is a full 140 miles/226km away) and continental. The topography, while not complex like that of Burgundy or Alsace, is changeable enough to create variation in the local mesoclimates.
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