Rhône Valley: The Smart Traveller's Wine Guide: A Review

 

            I have a particularly serious case of nostalgia for Japan, where I spent several years. I’m aware that I was irritated by many aspects of life there, but the feeling of nostalgia is inescapable.

The river at Arles

        I feel the same way about the Rhône Valley, although to a lesser extent. The memory of the summer warmth and of walks at twilight through the vineyards of Rasteau, or along the river in Arles, stays with me.

        That, more or less, explains why I bought Rhône Valley: The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide, by Matt Walls. I love reading, and I like drinking wines from the Rhône Valley almost as much; mostly, though, I just wished to indulge in a bit of good old-fashioned nostalgia. I only had a vague notion of writing a book review.

Rasteau

        The short book commences with a brief section about the history of viticulture and winemaking in the region. I sometimes wonder why there’s always a chapter about the history of a country, a region or winemaking in books about travel and wine. Often I skip these pages, and I think I have a greater enthusiasm for history than most. Do readers really care about the history of viticulture in the Rhône Valley? Perhaps.

        ‘Have you ever met a wine lover who isn’t obsessed with food?’ asks Matt Walls in the introduction to the book. Yes, me. I wrote the following after my last visit to the Rhône Valley:

I’m influenced by two factors when I order food: first, how hungry I am and, second, what I want to drink. Maybe the second takes precedence. My aim was to drink only local wine, and it had to be red. This suggested meat, which was in fact essential as I was utterly ravenous every time I sat down for dinner.

        Matt Walls has some interesting things to say about the local cuisine. He remarks that Andouillette, ‘a large sausage’, is ‘an acquired taste'. Its ‘detractors say it smells like faeces’. This reminded me of the time I ordered it in a restaurant in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, where the waitress seemed to want to persuade me not to have it. ‘You know what it is?’ she asked. I did, and it wasn’t very pleasant.

        ‘It’s not always obvious what to serve Condrieu [the most famous Viognier of all] with, as it’s so rich and aromatic’, writes Matt Walls. I don’t think this is true. I had a bottle of Guigal’s Condrieu a few years ago and I thought immediately that, like other full-bodied, glycerol-rich and low acidity whites from the Rhône, it would be an ideal partner for roast chicken. In fairness to the author, he does go on to say that poultry works with the grape. So, if you see a poulet rôti on the menu, look for a good Rhône white.

        I always enjoy reading about grapes, and there are a lot of them in the Rhône Valley. Not surprisingly, Matt Walls provides a very informed description of the varietals in the region. One of the ‘heady aromas’ of Viognier is jasmine, he comments. I think that’s true, but I’d say that jasmine is in fact rarely detectable in a Viognier. A lot of wines made from the grape are mediocre and disappointing, in my opinion. However, when you do pick it up, the jasmine tea note is both unexpected and wonderful.

        There is of course a lot of information directed towards tourists in the book. As someone who has travelled a lot, I can say that Matt Walls’ observation that taxis in the Rhône Valley ‘are inexplicably, eye-wateringly expensive’ could apply to just about any country. Not that that’s a good thing, of course. The only country where I felt like there was no chance of being stiffed by the driver was Japan. It was pricey, certainly, but I never believed I was being ripped off.

The Pont du Gard

        As I wrote at the start of this article, I have a bad case of nostalgia about the Rhône Valley. I suppose the litmus test, therefore, was whether the book made me want to return. Among the many excellent pictures of the region is one of the Pont du Gard, ‘an ancient Roman aqueduct’ over a river. As Matt Walls writes, ‘you can even go for a swim in the river on a hot day’. I did that once, and when I read those words I wanted to return.

       

       Published in The Wine Merchant, October 2025.

Cairanne

             Several months ago I spent about forty pounds on a bottle of Guigal's Châteauneuf du Pape blanc. I almost never spend that much on a bottle of wine, especially a white, so I had to ask myself: what was I thinking? Well, the fact is that I have a soft spot for the whites of that region.

 

Before I entered the wine trade, I took a backpack to the southern Rhône. I had already developed a liking for the area’s powerful and intoxicating red wines, so I decided to spend some time there, relying on public transport and my own two feet. It was high summer and the weather was glorious.

 

After visiting the attractive hillside wine village of Séguret, I walked several miles across the plain to my destination, Rasteau, in the middle of a roasting August afternoon. My route was complicated by the presence of the River Ouvèze, so I ended up going the long way via Roaix, a Côtes du Rhône named village which you almost never see on a label, at least in the U.K. I wrote the following in my notebook after that crazy trek:

 

Walk from Séguret to Roaix intolerable. Heat appalling, barely a breath of wind. Vines stretch across the flat land; gobelet, wires. Lots of canopy, big bunches of grapes. Hotel guy told me it hadn’t rained for two weeks; previous downpour was a violent thunderstorm.

 

Sweating buckets, I stopped at a roadside inn outside Roaix. It might have been wiser to order a Perrier or a Badoit, but I opted for a glass of 'vin blanc' instead. I don’t remember what it was, probably a Côtes du Rhône, but that was my memorable introduction to the whites of the southern Rhône.

 

After reaching my destination, I discovered that white AOC Rasteau was not a thing, that honour being reserved for Grenache-heavy reds and Vins Doux Naturel. Neighbouring Cairanne made whites, though, so I decided to go there. 

 

I recommend that any energetic lover of wines from the southern Rhône should undertake the walk between those two villages. You ascend a hill behind Rasteau, past row upon stony row of vines. Eventually you reach the top of ‘La Montagne’, which is actually only about 350 metres high, from which point you can see the ‘vieux village’ of Cairanne on a nearby hilltop. It’s a lovely walk, and if you undertake it in August when all the farmers are on holiday, the only sounds you’ll hear will be from cicadas, mosquitos and the occasional passing helicopter.

Cairanne

 

I got chatting to a wine merchant in the modern part of Cairanne, below the old hilltop village. White wine, he told me, was more important than red before phylloxera. Not anymore, of course! Still, whites are taken seriously in Cairanne, whose wines apparently have more acidity than those made in neighbouring villages. When I asked why this should be, I was given the rather enigmatic explanation that the soil and ‘terroir’ were responsible. I say enigmatic, because the soil and terroir seemed very similar to Rasteau’s to me: marl, clay, sand, an abundance of stones, all in a very warm and dry climate.

 

        I was curious about the grapes used in the blend, for they were not exactly household words, at least to an inexperienced British drinker. Grenache Blanc, he told me, was neutral, but had body. Bourboulenc was also quite neutral, but brought acidity, a rare thing in the southern Rhône. The flavour came from Clairette, which now has the caché of being the principal grape used in white Gigondas. For some reason, Roussanne didn’t merit a mention, perhaps because it was originally from the northern Rhône! At the time, I had little familiarity with these varietals, so I was fascinated.

 

I never made it to Châteauneuf du Pape, unfortunately. It turned out that the southern Rhône shares one of the U.K.’s deficiencies: you can’t rely on local buses. As for why I’m keen on whites from Cairanne, Lirac, Vacqueyras and so on, I think I have to acknowledge that, most importantly, they remind me of that beautiful region. I might even drink a rosé from there.

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Winner of Letter of the Month in Decanter Magazine

Rasteau

        I wasn’t struck by the impact on France of the recent terror attacks until I got to Chambéry. It’s a lovely city: the Alps provide a majestic backdrop, and the handsome shuttered buildings in the old town are draped with the red and white flag of Savoie. Such were my thoughts as I sat in the Place du Théâtre drinking a strong coffee. Then three soldiers in fatigues and berets who looked as hard as nails walked past bearing automatic weapons. It was a jarring reminder of France’s troubles.

        Perhaps I should have been prepared, though. While I was staying in a guesthouse in the Provençal wine village of Rasteau, a few hours south of Chambéry, the owner told me that the number of foreign guests had gone through the floor. They were afraid, she said. It was a shame, I agreed. And it really is, for Rasteau is a wonderful place.

It’s hard to believe that Rasteau belongs to the same country as Paris and Nice. It feels isolated from the stresses of the outside world. Very little happens, and the chimes of the bell tower every half hour seem designed to rouse the locals from their reveries. In the late afternoon, when the baking August heat has slackened off a little, old men take over the dusty square for games of pétanque. Other wizened figures sit on benches to observe them.

Off the square is a no-frills bar, the inside of which is likewise the preserve of elderly gentlemen. The drinks list is eccentric. I wanted a glass of Rasteau’s Vin Doux Naturel (a delicious and sweet local specialty similar to Port). They didn’t have any. The nearby post office only does business in the morning and the grocery shop has irregular opening hours. The bakery was shut because the owners had gone on holiday. You wonder how the owners and employees of these establishments can possibly make a living.

I went to Rasteau because of its wine. Its reds are concentrated and spicy. I spent hours wandering around the arid and empty vineyards (the farmers were all on holiday, like the bakers). The soil was dark brown, becoming lighter the nearer you got to the village. Pudding stones, or galets, were spread over the surface, in some cases covering whole rows. Massive bunches of Grenache and Syrah grapes drooped from the vines, looking ripe enough to harvest even at this early stage of the growing season.

 At night the vineyards were so peaceful; nothing was audible except for the relentless croaking of cicadas. On a ridge across the flat and deserted plain I could see the orange lights of the wine villages of Séguret, Sablet and Gigondas. They stood out like beacons in the darkness, and I could almost imagine I had stepped back into the past. For surely this night view has enthralled moonlight walkers for centuries.