Southern Rhone
The Southern Rhone lies on both sides of the south stretch of the Rhone river, not to be confused with the Northern Rhone, which is an entirely different appellation. The major city of the region and best home base is Avignon.
We started our trip by flying into Paris. It was wonderful to see the best city in the world again. We then hopped a high-speed train to Avignon. Avignon is a wonderful little city with some great history about the Catholic Popes.
Since this was our first European wine trip we booked a day tour to help us get our bearings. Mission accomplished, we visited a winery in Beaumes de Venise, Vacqueyras and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The tour gave us an introduction to the area and allowed us to determine that we could easily drop into wineries without a reservation. Brenda’s favorite meal/memory is the picnic we had in our apartment in Avignon. After our tour we walked over to the main market in town and picked up some bread, cheese, ham and some tomatoes and seasoning salt. The French know how to bake a loaf of bread, the tomatoes tasted like they use to when we were children and could eat them off the vine. This was all washed down with a bottle we bought on the tour.
The next couple of days we did true DIY touring. We went up to Rasteau, best known for their desert wine. We went back to the town of Vacqueyras and visited another producer. Chateauneuf-du-Pape is crazy, there were dozens of tasting shops in town. If you are a big fan of this wine I would suggest you take a taxi there so you can hit more than one shop. We also headed over to Gigondas for some touring and lunch. Gigondas is a lovely little town, with narrow cobblestone streets and flowers hanging from window boxes. There are no wineries in town but there is a store, which I believe is owned by the region’s wineries. You can have a small taste of different producers in order to determine what you want to buy. What we did buy was the best wine I have ever bought. It sat in my cellar for about 7 years and it came out with the fruit still shining through (thanks Grenache) but it had all these wonderful tertiary flavors like leather and tabacco (thanks Syrah). Gigondas is the best value in this area, producing wines often on par with Chateauneuf-du-Pape but at half the price.
Next we took a break from Wine touring, but not wine as dinner and lunch is always served with wine. We did a week of biking in the Luberon valley. Cycling provides an opportunity to burn off some calories, but not lose weight as the breakfast at our B&B and the dinners replaced what we burnt off. The Luberon is known for its dramatic hill side towns, so the biking was tough climbing up to these towns. The effort was worth it as they are very picturesque. The picture below was taken on a day ride over to Roussillon en Provence. It is an abandoned ochre mine. The whole town is painted in different shades of ochre. Fun fact, in the summer in this area the locals put ice in their rose wine. Rose went perfect with the main course salads that seemed to be on every lunch menu in the area.
Next we did some old fashioned touring. There is so much to see within about an hours drive from Avignon. Below is the spectacular Roman aqueduct Pont du Gard. If you into Roman history this whole area is rife with sights scattered around. Although I am getting worn out of museums, the one in Arles is one of my favorite ones as it has some great Roman treasures like a floor mosaic that is in amazing condition. The colosseum although small is in better shape than Rome’s.
Another thing to do in Arles and surrounding area is to walk in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh. Many of his most famous paintings were done in Arles.
We spent a few days in Provence, Aix-en-Provence to be exact. This was at the tail end of our trip as the plan was to fly up to Paris and then home. The closest airport in this area is the Marseille airport, which is located between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. Aix is a beautiful town and is an excellent base for this area.
The highlight though is the Mediterranean. No matter where I go, the color of the Mediterranean is always stunning. Below are the Calanques, limestone cliffs that plunge into the sea. You see them on a little boat tour.
Back to wine. This is Rose country, it’s so famous Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie source their Miraval rose from here. We drank a lot of rose on our trip, bit only visited one winery. It was quite a GPS adventure. You know how some GPS will send you into a lake, well ours sent us over a hill through these wonderful rocky outcrops with the shimmering Mediterranean in the background. The view will stay in my memory forever. The wine was pretty damn good as well.
This trip was so wonderful we adopted the template thereafter – Wine, Food, Sights and history, Physical activity.
I hope you enjoyed this blog and all the other ones on this site.