Wine region
Provence
Home of the pale rosé: over 27,000 hectares in three big AOCs, with Bandol and Cassis, sun, mistral and 2,600 years of wine-growing history.
- Vineyard area
- over 27,000 hectares in the three main AOCs, about 90 per cent of the region’s vines devoted to rosé
- Main grapes
- Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Tibouren; white: Rolle (Vermentino)
- Climate and soils
- Mediterranean: about 2,800 hours of sunshine, dry mistral; limestone in the west, crystalline rock in the east
- Signature wines
- Côtes de Provence, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, Coteaux Varois, Bandol, Cassis
- History
- Greeks from Phocaea found Marseille around 600 BC and bring the vine
Provence is the home of the pale rosé: about 90 per cent of the vineyard is devoted to rosé, and the region supplies about 40 per cent of France’s AOP rosé. The three major appellations Côtes de Provence, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence and Coteaux Varois en Provence together cover more than 27,000 hectares, spread over some 200 kilometres in the hinterland of the Mediterranean coast. Côtes de Provence, an AOC since 1977, is the largest with about 20,000 hectares and has five named sub-areas, among them Sainte-Victoire, Fréjus and La Londe. About 5 per cent of the world’s rosé comes from Provence.
The climate is Mediterranean, with about 2,800 hours of sunshine a year and the mistral, a dry wind that cools the vines and protects them from disease. In the west and north the bedrock is limestone, in the east the crystalline rock of the Maures and the Tanneron; the soils are poor but well drained.
The rosés are pale, dry and fresh, with strawberry, citrus and herbs. They come mostly from Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah, with Mourvèdre, Tibouren, a typical Provence variety, and a little Rolle, as Vermentino is called here. The colour comes from the grape skins alone, so winemakers press the grapes directly or leave them on the skins for only a few hours.
Besides rosé there are two specialities. Bandol, about 1,600 hectares on terraces, the restanques, above the sea in eight communes, belongs to Mourvèdre: the reds must contain at least 50 per cent of it and age at least 18 months in oak; they are dark, spicy and long-lived. Cassis, about 200 hectares by the sea, is among the first French appellations (1936) and today yields mostly white wine.
The history is old: Greeks from Phocaea founded Marseille around 600 BC and brought the vine to Gaul; Provence likes to call itself the oldest wine region in France. In the Middle Ages abbeys such as Saint-Victor in Marseille and Le Thoronet tended vines, and from 1880 phylloxera struck Provence too; the vines were saved by grafting onto American rootstocks. Switzerland also knows a pale rosé, Œil-de-Perdrix from Pinot Noir, originally from Neuchâtel, which follows a similar principle: light colour, fresh fruit. At the table, rosé goes with salads, vegetables, fish, bouillabaisse and aïoli, Bandol with lamb, braises and game, white Cassis with fish.