Vintage routes

A cycle tour can be a great way to explore French vineyards. Picture / Joel Damase

So, you'd like to go on a wine tour of France. How much time do you have: two weeks, two months, two years?

You can choose the type of wine/wines, the type of scenery and even the kind of cuisine. Because a wine tour is always about more than just tasting wines. It is about food, about meeting people, experiencing cultures. And, in France it is about tradition, and history.

The most important part of any wine holiday in France is the planning.

Wine is grown in most parts of this large country. To get from Champagne in the north, to southern regions such as the Rhone or Provence, you are looking at travelling almost the length of the country.

Travellers need to decide on the type of wine holiday.

How many areas do you want to visit? Or do you want to make brief visits to the most important regions? Regions, called appellations, can have dozens of sub-regions within their borders.

If you decide to specialise, you can establish a base or bases (hired villa, or pension, or hotel) and drive to different chateaus or wineries or other attractions each day.

If you want a quick taste of most major regions you will have to travel a lot and be prepared to live out of a suitcase. Having done it both ways, I prefer the more leisurely approach. That way you soak up more of the history of the area, and get a better appreciation of its culture and philosophy.

If the verdict is in favour of the specialised option, there are other decisions to make: which region or regions, for a start. Are you motivated solely by the type of wine, or are there other influences too?

Perhaps you would like to add art and culture. (Maybe even shopping.) If you use Paris as a base then you can explore wine regions closest to that city: Champagne to the north, the Loire to the south.

If the type of wine is paramount, everything becomes easier. You want chardonnay? Go to Burgundy. Ditto for pinot noir.

Cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc blends your thing? Go to Bordeaux.

Gewurztraminer, pinot gris or riesling? Alsace is the place. Sauvignon blanc your passion? Head for the Loire.

Warm reds made from syrah (shiraz, the Aussies call it), grenache, mourvedre and other varieties to your taste? Go south, to the Rhone.

There are many other areas, and many other grape varieties, but these are the most important ones.

Let's start with champagne, the world's most glamorous wine. By a combination of law, convention, and negotiated agreement, only sparkling wines made within the province of Champagne may be labelled champagne.

Champagne is 145km north-east of Paris. It is the most northern of the quality wine areas, and in winter snow can blanket the vineyards. Some of the countryside is flat and unspectacular, but it is the chalk under the ground that is interesting.

Chalk retains moisture, so warms the soil and produces grapes rich in nitrogen. Cool, damp cellars can be easily hewn from chalk, and it is in these large caverns that countless bottles rest and age. The most famous are at Champagne Ruinart (the oldest of the Champagne houses) which were carved by the Romans as chalk pits. The original Roman excavations and adze marks can still be seen.

The two main cities are Reims and Epernay. Both are interesting, but the former is more important historically, being the sacred city where France's kings were crowned.

In Champagne the name of the producer is paramount. This is because most of the wines are blended from pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay and the grapes can come from different vineyards and different districts.

Famous names abound - Krug, Louis Roederer, Bollinger, Moet and Chandon, Pommery, Pol Roger, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot, and many others. Take your pick.

To the east of Champagne, bordering Germany, is Alsace. Unlike in Champagne, sunshine is copious and consistent here. Like Champagne, it is predominantly white wine country, gewurztraminer, pinot gris, pinot blanc and a few lesser varieties.

Things are made easy for the wine tourist by a signposted Route de Vins, which meanders through lovely countryside and beautiful towns and villages. Kayserberg, and the walled villages (no vehicles allowed) of Riquewihr and Ribeauville are the most charming.

The cuisine of Alsace is based mainly on pork, goose and sausages. And you can enjoy some of the finest rieslings, gewurztraminers and white pinots.

South-west of Paris is the Loire Valley, the lazy Loire being France's largest river. This is a huge region, with many sub-regions - Touraine, Vouvray, Anjou, Saumur, Chinon and several others. A wide variety of wine is made - white, rose, red, still and sparkling, dry and sweet - but quality can be variable. Vintage variations can be marked.

Grape varieties are equally profuse: sauvignon blanc, chenin blanc, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, gamay, malbec, grolleau, pineau d'Aunis, melon de Bourgogne, et al. The best sauvignon blancs are Sancerre and Pouilly Fume, less

fruity and lively than those from Marlborough, but very good in their own way.

The Loire Valley, with its rivers and hills, castles and immaculate gardens, is arguably the most scenic of France's wine regions. Whereas Champagne is chalk, the Loire is largely limestone. It is from this that the opulent castles are built. The homes of ordinary people aren't bad, either.

The Loire's cheeses and mushrooms as almost as famous its castles. The former are aged, and the latter often grown underground in limestone caves, often under the vineyards.

Head almost due east and you reach, eventually, one of the most hallowed wine regions: Burgundy. Apart from some cheaper wines made from aligote (white), and gamay (red), this is pinot noir and chardonnay country.

But Burgundy is at once the most bewitching and the most bewildering wine region. Not only is quality variable, but tracking down the good is no easy matter.

Burgundy lies on one major, and several minor, fault lines. Seabed deposits of shells, some dating back to the Jurassic period, alternate with limestone and chalk. Vineyards just a few metres apart can produce wines with easily identifiable different characteristics.

The labelling and ranking systems - the latter based on the quality of the vineyard areas, not on the names or quality of the domaines/negociants/winemakers - is confusing.

Adding to the confusion is the proliferation of winemakers, most with small holdings and differing winemaking philosophies. This means that wine from a relatively modest area, made by a good winemaker, can be better than wine from a top area (grand cru) made by an indifferent one.

Some growers/winemakers own just a few hectares. Their wineries are backyard, behind-the-house, operations. You can walk down the streets of villages like Pommard or Savigny-les-Beaune at harvest time and find the air thick with the smell of fermenting grapes. There are no grand chateaus here, as in Bordeaux, although some of the wineries of the few large companies (Louis Jadot, especially) are impressive.

Burgundy is agricultural country. The wine complements the food. White Burgundy can be as dry as Arizona, and as flinty as a caveman's axe.

Keep going south and you reach the wider appellation of the Rhone. The northern Rhone part (the smallest in terms of wine quantity) is the most important in terms of quality. The two prestige names here are Hermitage and Cote Rotie. But there are others - Cornas, St Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage.

Syrah is king of the red wines here but this is also the district of Condrieu, home of the increasingly fashionable viognier white variety.

In the south the most famous name is Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but quality reds also come from Gigondas and Vacqueras. All these wines are blends, grenache, syrah, mourvedre, carignan and cinsault being the most used varieties.

Good roses come from Tavel and Lirac. Dry whites, from north and south, are made from marsanne or roussanne or both, and are fat and friendly.

Also in the south is the famous city of Avignon, like much of the Rhone Valley saturated in history, especially early Roman.

And so to Bordeaux, the world's largest fine wine (mainly red) district. Whereas much of the Rhone Valley abuts the Mediterranean, Bordeaux, almost directly to the east of it, touches the Atlantic.

While Bordeaux is huge, and encompasses many areas and types of wine (including the famous sweet wine areas of Sauternes and Barsac), to most fine wine lovers Bordeaux means the districts known as the left and right banks - Medoc on the left and St Emilion and Pomerol on the right.

The Medoc has more of the famous names like Chateaus Latour, Lafite, Haut Brion, Margaux and Mouton-Rothschild, not to mention dozens of other classed growths, and more than 100 cru bourgeois chateaus.

The Medoc growths classification, which dates back to 1855, divides the top 61 red wines into five growths (think of classes, like first, second etc).

Medoc reds are all blends. Cabernet sauvignon and merlot are the most important varieties, but many chateaus also use smaller amounts of cabernet franc or petit verdot.

Across the river, merlot is king, with cabernet franc the queen. St Emilion has its own classification (as does Graves, the left bank area closest to the city of Bordeaux), but Pomerol has none. The most famous names of St Emilion are Chateaus Ausone and Cheval Blanc, Pomerol Chateau Petrus (often the world's most expensive red) and Le Pin.

In St Emilion, the town of the same name is as charming and historic as one could wish. The ancient church is carved out of rock.

The Medoc's villages Pauillac, St Julien, St Estephe and Margaux, are lesser affairs. The Medoc's beauty lies in its stunning chateaus, lovely gardens and the immaculate vineyards, with the vines kept low and close to each other.

The best advice anyone can give you before a wine tour of France is to buy a book on the area/areas you are to visit.

On your bike

You don't have to motor from chateau to chateau, from domaine to domaine, or village to village. You can cycle.

And you can have your cycling tour organised for and managed by Barbara Grieve from Hawkes Bay.

Those who have been on her trips rave about them. One such couple is Rod and Joy McKay, from Waipu. Having biked through Bordeaux with Barbara, they signed up for the next one (Burgundy) with alacrity.

Joy McKay: "They were so well organised. The accommodation was always excellent, in little chalets, or gorgeous old abbeys, mill houses, or small hotels.

"The French people were all very friendly, perhaps more so because we were cyclists. The food and wine were great, and the biking not too demanding. We were usually taken on back roads where traffic was minimal."

The trips last for a week to 11 days. All are all escorted, for a maximum of 14 people. Contact: Barbara Grieve Cycling Holidays in France, Whakapirau, RD 4, Hastings.

Hitting the wine trail once you're in Paris

Champagne - Several trains each day to both Reims and Epernay.

Alsace - Daily trains to Strasbourg.

The Loire - Daily flights and trains to Nantes.

Burgundy - Daily trains to Dijon in the north, and Beaune in the south.

The Rhone - Daily flights and trains to Lyon, north of the Rhone, and trains to Avignon, south of it.

Bordeaux - Daily flights and trains to the city of Bordeaux.