Wine regions

• Wine region

  Alsace

  A Rhenish vineyard stretched over 120 kilometres along the foot of the Vosges, between Marlenheim and Thann, Alsace owes its character to a mountain range that shields it from Atlantic rain — a foehn effect that makes Colmar one of the driest towns in France — and to a geological mosaic left behind by the collapse of the Rhine graben. It is also the great French exception on the label: the great majority of its wines carry the name of the grape rather than that of a place, across seven principal varieties whose fullest expression is the 51 Grands Crus.

• Wine region

  Beaujolais

  Between Mâcon and Lyon, a vineyard of granite hills in the north and clay-limestone plateaus in the south, given over almost entirely to a single grape, Gamay, made by semi-carbonic maceration. Twelve appellations structure it in three tiers: Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages at the base, ten crus at the top — Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Régnié and Saint-Amour. Made world-famous by the commercial phenomenon of Beaujolais Nouveau, the region also paid a price in reputation for it, before a quality revival that took root in Morgon from the 1980s onward.

• Wine region

  Bordeaux

  France's largest AOC vineyard by area, Bordeaux is organised around the Gironde estuary and its two rivers: a gravelly Left Bank where Cabernet Sauvignon leads, and a clay-limestone Right Bank where Merlot takes over. It is the home of the blend, of dry whites from Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, and of the sweet wines of Sauternes.

• Wine region

  Burgundy

  A long ribbon of limestone slopes running from Chablis to the Mâconnais, Burgundy rests on two near-exclusive varieties: Pinot Noir for the reds, Chardonnay for the whites. Nowhere has the idea of the climat — the named, delimited plot tasted on its own terms — been pushed further, into a hierarchy of regional, village, premier cru and grand cru appellations.

• Wine region

  Champagne

  The most northerly of France's great appellations, Champagne turns chalk soils and a cool climate into piercingly acidic grapes that a second fermentation in bottle turns into sparkling wine. Three varieties dominate: Chardonnay on the Côte des Blancs, Pinot Noir on the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Bar, and Meunier in the Vallée de la Marne.

• Wine region

  Corsica

  A French island by law and flag, Italian by almost every one of its grape varieties: niellucciu is nothing other than Tuscan sangiovese, sciaccarellu is identified with mammolo, and vermentino, under its local name vermentinu, carries most of the island's whites. Four appellations structure the island vineyard — Patrimonio on the limestone of the north, Ajaccio on the granite of the west, the regional Vin de Corse AOC, and the vin doux naturel Muscat du Cap Corse, produced on the narrow peninsula that closes off the island's north.

• Wine region

  Jura

  A small vineyard on the western edge of the Jura massif, whose real subject is not primarily a grape or a terroir but a method of ageing: vin jaune, Savagnin aged at least six years in oak without topping up, under a veil of yeasts, bottled in the 62-centilitre clavelin. Four appellations structure the vineyard — Arbois, Château-Chalon (vin jaune only), L'Étoile and the regional Côtes du Jura — on an encépagement found almost nowhere else: Savagnin, Poulsard and Trousseau alongside Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

• Wine region

  Languedoc-Roussillon

  France's leading wine region by volume, a broad Mediterranean arc running from Nîmes to the Spanish border, long given over to bulk wine before a quality turn under way since the 1980s. Languedoc blends Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Carignan and Cinsaut over a mosaic of schist, limestone and rolled pebbles; Roussillon, further south, adds its own distinct tradition of fortified vins doux naturels.

• Wine region

  Loire Valley

  The vineyards follow the Loire and its tributaries from the Massif Central to the Atlantic, changing grape at every stage: Melon de Bourgogne around Nantes, Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc in Anjou-Saumur and Touraine, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir in the Centre-Loire. The through-line is a cool climate and wines built on acidity, not a single variety.

• Wine region

  Provence

  One of the oldest wine regions in France, planted by Phocaean settlers around Massalia some 600 years before the common era, today dominated by rosé under the mistral and set on ground split between limestone and crystalline rock. Bandol, on the Var coast near Toulon, is its red exception: Mourvèdre-led wines given long ageing in wood, while the rest of the region turns most of its harvest into rosé made by direct pressing or by saignée.

• Wine region

  Rhône Valley

  The Rhône Valley reads as two vineyards joined only by the river: a narrow granitic north given over to Syrah and a handful of Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne whites, and a broad stony south where Grenache leads Mediterranean blends. The break falls around Valence, where a continental climate gives way to the Mediterranean regime and the mistral.

• Wine region

  Savoie

  An alpine vineyard scattered in pockets rather than a continuous belt, on the limestone scree and moraine left behind by retreating glaciers, from south of Thonon-les-Bains to west of Albertville. Three appellations structure most of the output — the regional Vin de Savoie AOC and its sixteen complementary geographic denominations, Roussette de Savoie, reserved for the sole variety altesse, and Seyssel, the oldest of the three — on an encépagement found almost nowhere else: jacquère, altesse, mondeuse blanche and mondeuse noire, gringet, alongside chardonnay and pinot noir borrowed from neighbouring Burgundy.

• Wine region

  South West France

  A mosaic of scattered vineyards along the Lot, the Tarn, the Aveyron, the Garonne and the Pyrenean foothills, whose unity owes less to a shared terroir than to a historical accident: the privilege of Bordeaux, which for five centuries blocked these "Haut Pays" wines from reaching the port downstream. Its interest is first and foremost varietal — Cot (the Malbec of Cahors's "black wine"), Tannat (Madiran), Petit and Gros Manseng (Jurançon), Fer Servadou, and at Gaillac old varieties such as Duras, Prunelard, Len de l'El and Mauzac.