Loire Valley 

It is among the largest wine regions in France: it follows that different types of wines are produced here, from whites to reds, rosés, sparkling wines and even sweet wines . The Loire Valley is however famous for its white wines, and in particular for the ones produced with Sauvignon and Chenin Blanc grapes, even if it has a pretty interesting production of red wines, mainly based on Cabernet Franc and Gamay vines. The Loire Valley is also famous for Muscadet , a wine famous for its ideal match with shellfish, produced with the Melon de Bourgogne vine. The wine region, as the name suggests, extends along the course of the Loire river, the longest in France. The climate is rather cool, both for the temperature and for the latitude; this causes the quantity of sugars in the grapes to be particularly low and these wines are light and low in alcohol, characterized by high acidity. Despite this, for about twenty years the practice of fermenting and aging the important wines of the region in barriques has been spreading, with the result of producing more robust wines with evident toasted qualities, sometimes objectively distant from those which can be considered classic styles of the region. Sancerre , Pouilly-Fumé and Vigneti Centrali are the best known winegrowing areas, along with Touraine and Anjou-Saumur .