The Rhône Valley in France is overwhelmingly devoted to red wine production.
While the Rhône River is dotted with vineyards from its headwaters in Switzerland to its mouth on the French Mediterranean coast, the Rhône Valley properly refers to two clusters of appellations along the banks of the river in Southern France. The Northern Rhône, or Rhône septentrionale, occupies a narrow band of vineyards hugging the river just south of Beaujolais, from Vienne to Valence. The vineyards of the Southern Rhône, or Rhône méridionale, funnel outward south of Montélimar toward Avignon, near the river’s Mediterranean basin. While these two separate stretches are often considered collectively, the Northern and Southern Rhône are climatically and viticulturally distinct.
The Rhône Valley and its environs boast a long history of enological importance. The introduction of winemaking in France can be traced to the Greeks, who established vine cultivation at their Massalia settlement—modern-day Marseilles—in approximately 600 BCE. At the height of Greek trade, some 10 million liters of wine in amphorae were shipped through Massalia into the heart of Gaul via the Rhône River. The Romans continued this trend with their arrival in the Southern Rhône in 125 BCE, and viticulture spread to the Northern Rhône by the first century CE. The Northern Rhône’s picturesque, hallmark terraces were first constructed by Roman workers. Vienne evolved as an important Roman provincial capital, and the Viennese vinum picatum, or "pitched wine," was exported to Rome itself. Whether vinum picatum was simply a reference to the wine’s character resulting from its mode of transport
This sentence needs to be updated to 5 with the inclusion of Notre-Dame des Anges last year: "Rosés and red wines may be bottled under one of four subzone designations: La Londe, Pierrefeu, Sainte-Victoire, and Fréjus."
In fact, in the Oxford Companion to Wine, Third Edition, Tavel is described as a "right bank appellation for dry rose in the southern RHONE..."
actually, in France it is preferred to refer to the side of the river as one goes downstream, as in Right Bank vs Left Bank Bordeaux e.g. Or Rive Gauche in Paris, which refers to the southern bank of the Seine (as if flows east to west before turning north). However, i think "western shore" is totally fine, as it eliminates the need to know which direction the Rhone flows (south).
Here is a minor note about the wording of the opening sentence of the seventh paragraph in the Southern Rhône section: "On the western shore of the Rhône.." should be written as "On the western bank of the Rhône..". Thank you for the enormous amount of work that the Guild has done to compile this information.
It's fixed. Thank you!