The Rhône Valley vineyard is a French vineyard stretching on both sides of the Rhône, from Vienne in the north to Avignon in the south, out of a total of 1317 municipalities 1 . It is the second vineyard in France 2 , 3 in terms of production volume of AOC wines, after Bordeaux. It extends over six departments: Rhône, Loire, Ardèche and Gard, on the right bank of the Rhône, Drôme and Vaucluse, on the left bank. These departments are part of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Occitanie and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions.
From north to south, this vineyard is divided into two sets of appellations:
- on the one hand, the northern Rhône valley, from Vienne to Valence (Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Saint-Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage 4 , etc.);
- on the other hand, the southern Rhône valley, from Montélimar to Avignon (appellations grignan-les-adhémar, châteauneuf-du-pape, Gigondas, muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, vacqueyras, etc.)
There are also the valleys of the tributaries of the Rhône, first that of the Drôme which forms the Diois (appellations clairette de Die, crémant de Die, coteaux-de-die and châtillon-en-diois), then that of Calavon ( Ventoux appellation), the right bank of the Basse-Durance (Luberon appellation) and finally part of the Gard (costières-de-nîmes and Clairette de Bellegarde appellations).
