Climate and Geography
The Collioure wine region is located along the Mediterranean coast in the Roussillon district, extending from the coast up to the foothills of the Pyrenees which separates the area from the Spanish wine region of Catalonia across the border. Both the mountains and the sea have strong influences on the region's distinctly Mediterranean climate. During the summer growing season, temperatures are very warm and dry with the potential for draught. In the evening, cool winds from the mountains descend above the vineyard which can help moderate temperatures for the vines.
Vineyard soils in the area ranging from alluvial soils near the sea and rivers to more gravel, limestone and schist based soils closer to the foothills of the Pyrenees. The soil types will have an impact on the resulting style of wine with the more schist based soils on the higher slopes of the foothills produced more intense, full bodied wines while the more alluvial soils closer to the sea will produce lighter styles of wine.
Read more about this topic: Collioure AOC
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or geography:
“A tree is beautiful, but whats more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (18601904)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)