Sur lie white
Left on its spent yeast for months without racking, which builds body and a bready character in a wine that would otherwise be thin. Muscadet's whole identity.
The numbers
Each bar drawn against all 30 styles
Alcohol
11-12.5%
11% - 12.5%
Titratable acidity
6-8 g/L
6 - 8
pH
3-3.3
3.0 - 3.3
Residual sugar
0-3 g/L
0 - 3
Serve at
8-11 C
Worth opening after
6 months
and it keeps improving to roughly 3 years
Sulphite at pH 3.15
18 mg/L
free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular
What goes wrong
Leaving it on gross lees rather than fine. Rack off the heavy sediment within a fortnight, then leave it on what remains; the coarse lees go reductive.
Usually made from
At least one of these figures is set by an appellation or labelling rule somewhere. The rest are typical published analyses of commercial examples.