A land steeped in water and Clairette grapes
Technical description of the terroir
– Appellations d’Origine Protégée (PDOs) : Stratified scree
Heavily leached soil, iron-red in colour, with clay and Rhodanian pebbles originating from the River Rhone during the Villafranchian period, when climatic oscillations leading to the Quaternary glaciations began.
Small rolled pebbles on deep clay layers are visible.
– Vins de Pays : Demi Gress ou Loess
Soil is poor in alluvial and colluvial deposits.
These are plains drained by the river Rhône.
Wine profiles
Appellations d’Origine Protégée (PDO) – tope of the range red, white and rosé wines.
Terres de Bellegarde produce very spicy reds with notes of ripe fruit and well-balanced whites with notes of white fruit and hawthorn.
Vins de Pays wines are a deeply fruity range, developed using technological processes.
Appellations
Appellation d’Origine Protégée Clairette de Bellegarde : A still white wine, it can only be produced in the municipality of Bellegarde using the Clairette grape variety.
Appellation d’Origine Protégée Costières de Nîmes.
Vins de Pays du Gard – Vins de Pays d’Oc.
Grape varieties
– Appellations d’Origine Protégée (PDO): Clairette de Bellegarde (white and rosé), Syrah, Grenache.
– Vins de Pays : Ugni blanc (Trebbiano), Merlot and Cabernet.
Surface area
– AOP (PDO) Costières de Nîmes : 150 Hectares
– AOP (PDO) Clairette de Bellegarde : 50 Hectares
– Vins de Pays : 50 Hectares
Landscape
Water features everywhere in this municipality, which is criss-crossed by the Rhône-Sète Canal, and decorated by numerous fountains and old water mills. The wine-growing landscape is still very much alive here, thanks in particular to the large-scale cultivation of table grapes. Here in the Gard, neighbouring rice fields adjoin these Vins de Pays wine-growing areas.