Coteaux de l’Aubance AOC

Coteaux de l’Aubance AOC is an appellation (1950) for a medium-sweet white wine made from Chenin Blanc in Anjou southwest of the city of Angers in the west of France’s Loire Valley. The vineyards lie in ten communes (listed below) o the south (left) bank of the Loire river opposite and just south of Angers, and immediately north of the more renowned Coteaux du Layon AOC. It is named after the Aubance, a tributary of the Loire which runs parallel with the Layon a few kilometres upstream (Clive Coates MW: 1990, p.235). Red wines from this same area can be bottled under the Anjou-Villages-Brissac AOC.

Vineyard area & wine production: 1988 112ha produced 1,749hl (Clive Coates MW: 1990, p.235).

Terroir: Andrew Jefford (2006, p.50) notes that ‘the [schistous soils, with its heat-retaining slate topsoil] are the same soils as Savennières, but [the zone has] not quite the same good fortune with its slopes and aspects.’ The geographical area is characterized by a landscape made up of many small hills, not very steep, of varied exposure, whose altitudes vary between 50 metres and 90 metres.

It extends over the territory of the 10 communes mentioned above and is limited, to the west, by the mouth of the Aubance river in the Loire, to the east, by a Cretaceous plateau on the edge of the Paris Basin, to the north, along the Loire and on the southern fringe, through the forests of Brissac and Beaulieu.

The Aubance is a small tributary of the Loire, emblematic of this geographical area and flowing north, from its source and to the town of Brissac-Quincé. It then turns north-west to the municipality of Mûrs-Erigné, then its course becomes parallel to that of the Loire south-west of the city of Angers.

The soils, developed on the schist or schisto-sandstone substrate of the Armorican Massif which constitutes a plateau sloping gently towards the Loire, are most often shallow with good thermal behavior and characterized by low water reserves. On the western part of the geographical area, occasional outcrops emerge from acidic eruptive formations (rhyoliths) or basic eruptions (spilites) at the origin of very stony soils.

The communes located north of the production zone have the particularity of being based on slate shale formations. These have been used for several centuries to build the walls of houses, build roofs, make floors and even make pieces of furniture such as sinks, tables or stairs.

The geographical area is a low-watering enclave, benefiting from a Foehn effect, sheltered from oceanic humidity due to the higher reliefs of Choletais and Mauges. Annual precipitation is around 585 millimeters while it is nearly 800 millimeters in Choletais. The values found at Brissac-Quincé are the lowest of the weather stations in the department of Maine-et-Loire. There is also a difference in rainfall during the vegetative cycle of around 100 millimeters compared to the rest of the department.

Average temperatures are relatively high (around 12 ° C) and 1 ° C higher than the entire department of Maine-et-Loire. The particular mesoclimate of this sector is highlighted by the southern trend of the flora within which holm oaks and parasol pines are present.