Paris 2024 - Day 7 (July 23rd) Arles, Avignon and Chateauneuf-du-Pape

Today, we are visiting the Roman ruins in Arles (pronounced ARL) in the morning, then taking a tour of the Chateauneuf-du-Papes wine growing region. Our tour guide is going to pick us up in Avignon, so we have train tickets at around noon from Arles to Avignon. But first Arles. Beth tells me that just like the ceramic tiles around the doors in Porto, Portugal, shutters are a thing in Arles. Apparently, they have to have a particular look but can be of almost any color:

People have been living in Arles for a long time because it is on the Rhône River that connects the Mediterranean with Switzerland. Its history dates back to about 800 BCE and was a Phoenician trading port before it was conquered by the Romans in 123 BCE. Given its location on the Rhone and on the main route between Rome and Spain, Arles quickly expanded into a major city. The main building from that time is the Amphitheater built in 90 CE. You can think of it as a mini-Coliseum – no naval battles inside, but they did have chariot races and gladiator fights:

After the Romans were defeated, the amphitheater served as a small walled town although it is not clear to me how many houses they could build even though they disassembled a lot of the interior walls to build them. The tower in the left picture above is one of four watch towers that were built at that time. Since it became a national monument in the early 19^th century and particularly after it received UNESCO World Heritage status in 1981, the city has been working on restoring it to its original look. Outside the amphitheater, we see this sign:

Many famous artists have lived in Arles including Picasso, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Van Gogh must have had a better agent because we see a number of these signs facing views that were in one of the more than 300 paintings that Van Gogh painted during his two-year stay in Arles before he was confined in a mental asylum.

Across the street from the amphitheater are the ruins of the Roman theater:

The Theater was built in the 1^st century CE and originally could hold 8,000 people, but it was used as a marble quarry in the Middle Ages so there is only the stage, the orchestra, two columns and a small bit of the seating area remain.

Down the street from the Theater is the Church of St. Trophime, a former cathedral built between the 12^th and 15^th centuries. This church was built upon the site of the Basilica of Arles that was built in the 5^th century and dedicated to my namesake St. Stephen. Here are some pictures:

St. Steve in the middle picture!

It is a little past 11 AM and we have about an hour before our train departs for Avignon. Unfortunately, everyone in France eats lunch late so most of the sidewalk cafés don’t open for lunch until noon. We finally stop at a crepery in the square across from the church.

We head back to the parking garage to pick up our car. We are getting a little tight on time, but know that the train station (Gare d’Arles) is not far away back toward our Airbnb. Waze takes us to the right area, but all of the parking places, at least those that we can park this boat in, are full. We finally end up parking up on a sidewalk behind a row of other cars. But we still don’t know where the Gare is. We walk all the way around the big building close to us and before realizing that it is an apartment building. At the last minute, we see a small building across the street with a small sign that says Gare d’Arles. We are pretty sure that we’ve missed our train but are relieved to find that the train is 5 minutes late!

Avignon is the 2^nd stop so the train ride is not very long. The area around the Avignon train station is closed to traffic so Beth is communicating with our guide about where we will meet him. There is a central area that goes between the train station and the cathedral that we are told to follow, then we head off to the left a little. Down the street, we see a guy getting out of his car and waving at us – I guess we are in the right place!

Our guide is Olivier. Olivier was born in England, has a French mother, and moved to Provence (the region we are in) about 20 years ago. He wants to know what we know about wine, and we are able to convince him that we have some knowledge about the subject?! We are going to Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a wine that we have enjoyed since we were in our 20s. I had originally thought that the name meant the castle of the ninth Pope. This is because in the 14^th century, there was a schism in the Catholic church and for a while, all of the Popes ruled from Avignon. In fact, toward the end of this time, there were two Popes at a time, one in Rome and one in Avignon. But Olivier tells us that the accurate translation is New Castle of the Pope. This was actually a summer home built in the late 14^th century for Pope John XXII, the second of the Avignon Popes. He tells us that we are going to visit two wineries, the first a small, family-run business and the second, a more modern business. We are used to winery tours in Napa and Sonoma counties where the wine maker is elevated to a God-like figure who is able to blend wines from various vineyards and varietals to produce outstanding wines. Olivier explains that the approach is much different in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Here the terroir is everything. Terroir is a function of microclimate (the distribution of temperature and precipitation and wind throughout the year), soil type (fertility, drainage and ability to retain heat) and geomorphology (how the mountains, valleys, rivers, etc. interact with the client). Basically, the French believe that if you match the right type of grape with the right type of terroir, then anyone can make a great wine.

Both wineries we visited are in the Chateauneuf-du-Pape AOC (Appellation d'origine contrôlée). This is an organization that sets rules to ensure that the reputation of the wines in the region stay high. The AOC controls all wine produced over a 3200-hectare region that includes the village of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and parts of three other villages. It is allowed within this zone to blend 13 different red grapes into the wine, but the majority of each blend must be from the grenache grape. About 95% of the wine produced in the AOC is red wine and the other 5% is white wine. Rose wine cannot be produced in the AOC. While we are used to long rows of grapes growing along a trellis in order to facilitate mechanized grape picking, the AOC has mandated that grapes must grow vertically and must be picked by hand. Vineyards can violate the rules if they want to, but then they cannot use the Chateauneuf-du-Pape name on their labels which means that they won’t be able to sell wine at premium prices. Here are some pictures:

Note how rocky the ground is in the second picture? Olivier explains that the best wines are grown in the most terrible ground! If the soil is rocky, the grape roots are forced to grow straight down in a search for water. Once the roots reach the underlying water table, they will be less sensitive to the ups and downs of precipitation than plants that grow much shallower root systems in rich soil. In fact, we see almost no soil at all in the field that we walk into – all we see are rocks! Olivier is obviously well known in these wineries. In fact, at the 2^nd winery, the woman running the tasting room (the daughter of the owner) is busy with another group, so Olivier helps himself to a bottle in the refrigerator and pours our glasses for us. We prefer the wine at the 2^nd winery and ask Olivier how we can buy some. He says that you don’t want to buy now because the wine will cook in the heat just as our bottle did the day before. He said that instead we should buy our wine now through a service that he uses, and he will ship it to us in November when it is cooler. We agree and buy a half a case of several different types of red wine. On the way back to Avignon, we catch a glimpse of the New Castle:

I learn later that the Germans had used the castle as an observation point and when they retreated from the area, they tried to blow it up. However, they were only able to destroy the north portion of the tower, the south portion remains to this day. Olivier drops us off in Avignon close to where he picked us up and suggests that since we have some time before our train, we take a walk by the Pope’s church. It is above 90 F at this point, but it sounds like a good idea so off we go. After about 10 minutes, we see this:

This is the Palais des Papes, the home of six Popes from 1334 CE to 1377 CE and a couple of anti-Popes for about 40 years afterwards. It remains the largest Gothic palace in Europe. We wish we could go inside, but we don’t have time before our train. But we do have time for gelato! An enterprising vendor set up a stand under the trees across from the Palais and they were doing great business on this hot afternoon, and we are happy to get in the queue and then enjoy the gelato on our walk back to the train station. There is a little problem with the train because we don’t see a train going to Arles. It turned out that we had to go one stop south, change trains and then go one more stop to Arles. While waiting for the second train, we listen to the “song” of the cicadas which, just like in the eastern US, have hatched out and are making a ruckus. Back in Arles, our car is still there and doesn’t have a parking ticket on it! We were pretty cooked after a day in the heat (and wind) so we just had the same charcuterie plates we had the previous night and then pack our suitcases.