Off the Beaten Path: Wine, Food and Attractions in the Southern Rhone Valley

The Rhone Report: About Rhone and Rhone-Style Wines and Winemakers is part of an ongoing series.

With summer vacation season just around the corner, some wine-interested travelers may want to learn about wine, food and sightseeing highlights in one of our favorite corners of the world – the southern Rhone Valley of France. Specifically, in this column we are focusing on the core of the Cotes du Rhone wine area in the northern part of the department of the Vaucluse, called Haut Vaucluse.

The Vaucluse

The Vaucluse includes Rhone River towns such as Avignon (home of the popes in the 14th century) and Orange (famous for its Roman ruins) and extends east to Mont Ventoux and south to the area called the Luberon, made famous by Peter Mayle in A Year in Provence and other books. It is roughly an hour north of Marseille and two hours south of Lyon. The Vaucluse is the northernmost part of Provence. In every respect, from the climate to the local foods to the architecture to the colorful markets, the Vaucluse is thoroughly and delightfully Provencal.

The northern part of the Vaucluse between the Rhone River and Mont Ventoux (at 6,263 feet, or 1,909 meters, it is a highly visible landmark for great distances) is the heart of the Cotes du Rhone (CdR) wine growing area and includes the town of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, famous for its AOC wines of the same name. Most wine lovers already know that the greatest wine of the southern Rhone is Chateauneuf-du-Pape. But not enough is known about some other very good, and less expensive, wines from nearby.

Discovering the lesser known areas

In this column, we are going to focus on wine, food and sights off the beaten path in the area just to the northeast of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.