Moselle

Styles

Principal grape varieties

Accessory grape varieties

Terroir

• The geographical area spans 18 communes in the Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle départements, on a cuesta relief with slopes facing east and south.
• The escarpment faces are made up of hard layers of limestone, sandstone or dolomite, while the softer, marl-rich slopes are covered with colluvium from these faces and sometimes with old alluvial deposits from the Moselle.
• The soils are predominantly clay-limestone and contain relatively abundant coarse elements, a point confirmed by the Wikipedia summary, which describes them as generally clay-limestone and more or less stony.
• The Moselle vineyard is subject to a temperate continental climatic influence, a source of sometimes destructive frosts, tempered by openness to rainy but milder westerly oceanic flows.
• The cuestas, with their mostly wooded faces, form a protective screen favoring around 1600 hours of sunshine per year in Metz, rainfall of around 800 millimetres on the winegrowing slopes against 1000 to 1200 millimetres on the Lorraine plateau, and good late-season conditions.
• The winegrowing landscape is structured into three cuesta formations of the eastern Paris Basin: the Côte de Moselle and its foothill slope, the Côte Infraliasique, split between the Sierck and Vic-sur-Seille sectors, and the Côte de Lorraine, with the relief of the Stromberg.

Facts drawn from the specification's terroir-link section by automatic interpretation — see the source.

All appellations in France

Sources

• Product specification (BO Agri, PDF) — approved 8 juin 2026
• Official INAO text (show_texte)
• INAO product entry