Mademoiselle Marguerite Cremant de Limoux Brut

Mademoiselle Marguerite by Antech – a tribute to a very special woman.

Marguerite Bourriane was the daughter of a small grapegrower at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains in France. She took over the reigns in the 1930s and became the first female winemaker in the Limoux area. Now behind the wheel of the family wine ‘biz with a real drive to succeed, she was putting the pedal to the metal in another sense when she also became the first female in the area to get her driver’s license!

Champagne might be France’s most famous sparkling wine but it ain’t the oldest – or the most affordable!

They reckon that title goes to the monks of the Saint Hilaire monastery in Limoux in the Languedoc region of southern France, who discovered the secret of creating fizz some 150 years before Dom Perignon (another monk, now quite famous, you might’ve heard of him?).

Limoux is where this little beauty comes from and made by the crew at Antech. All of their wines are hand harvested and produced using the traditional method (aka methode traditionelle, the same way as Champagne) and aged for a minimum of 24 months on lees, a technique used to add richness and creaminess. These guys are also certified ‘Terra Vitis’ – a French national benchmark for sustainable wine production.

This is their Cremant de Limoux Brut and if you need to know just one thing about Cremant sparkling wine – it’s like Champagne on a shoestring budget! Produced in eight Cremant appellations around France (Limoux included) the rules and regulations for Cremant production are only slightly less as strict as those in the Champagne region. These include things like mandatory hand harvested grapes, whole bunch pressed and no more than 100 litres of juice per 150kg of grapes.

This is 70% Chardonnay, 20% Chenin Blanc and 10% of the Mauzac grape. Mau-what?! Pronounced ‘mow-zack‘ this is Limoux’s most famous grape – and some reckon could be the grape used in that very first sparkling wine!

This is a true lesson in seriously high quality French fizz with out the big price tags and flashy brand names. Think of it as a Champagne look-a-like for a fraction of the price!