Pays de Brive

Styles

Principal grape varieties

Terroir

• The Brive basin forms a structural window (boutonnière) 60 kilometres long and 10 to 20 kilometres wide, elongated along a northwest–southeast axis, bordered by the crystalline Massif Central, the Périgord Blanc, and the Causse de Martel.
• The zone presents a mosaic of acid brown soils over sandstone or schist, calcic brown soils over marly limestones, and thin calcareous brown soils over the Causse.
• Departmental rainfall shows a gradient ranging from 800 mm in the Brive Basin to 1,500 mm on the Plateau de Millevaches.
• To the north of Argentat lie metamorphic terrains of schist and gneiss, heavily disrupted by a system of border faults running parallel to the great Argentat fault, while the great Meyssac fault subdivides the Brive basin into two sub-basins.
• On the slopes linking the Bas Limousin plateau to the Brive Basin, delineated by the slate fault running from Donzenac to Juillac, one encounters colluvial soils over crystalline schist and acid brown soils over schist and quartzite, farmed with the aid of terrace walls such as those of La Bontat at Voutezac.
• The vineyard lies at between 150 and 250 metres of altitude, and beyond 300 metres, to the north of the Meyssac Fault, no viticulture takes place on the crystalline basement.
• The basin, fully south-facing and sheltered to the north by the first foothills of the Massif Central, has a mean annual temperature one degree higher than that of the surrounding plateaus, and is very rarely affected by hailstorms, which track northward through the Vézère valley and southward through the Dordogne valley.

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 25 septembre 2020 publié au JORF du 13 octobre 2020, JORF 13 octobre 2020
• Official INAO text (show_texte)
• INAO product entry
• Official trade body site — Confédération des Vins IGP de France