France
Rhône Valley
Blessed with famous slopes like the Côte-Rôtie, France’s oldest wine region boasts an array of prestigious wines – some of the world’s most sought-after and expensive bottles on account of their longevity, ultra-premium quality and limited availability.
The Rhône Valley wine region stretches over 200 kilometres, starting at Vienne as a relatively narrow area before fanning out into a broad river basin all the way to Avignon. Out of a total of 21 permitted grape varieties on the Rhône, Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre play the leading role.
Northern and Southern Rhône
The valley’s 60,000 hectares under vine are subject to a north-south divide. On the one hand, the Northern Rhône is all about granite and gneiss soils on steep, stony, often terraced vineyard slopes, where abundant sunlight, cooling northerly mistral winds and a continental climate provide ideal conditions for the dominant grape variety Syrah.
The Southern Rhône, on the other hand, enjoys a drier, more Mediterranean-influenced climate, where heat-absorbing, rounded galet stones on alluvial soils translate into wines with pronounced fruit expression. Red grape varieties also dominate in the south, but there is a wider range of white varieties too.
High-quality appellations
Exceptional, long-lived red wines from northern appellations such as Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu and Hermitage define the essence of the Rhône. In view of their cachet, rarity and longevity, they count among the world’s most expensive bottles and are usually only available from specialist merchants. However, such prestigious wines constitute only a very small percentage of production up and down the valley. Cooperatives dominate in the Southern Rhône, where total output is much higher than in the Northern Rhône. Côtes-du-Rhône and the more strictly regulated Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages are the two important generic appellations in addition to crus such as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Cornas and Gigondas.
