Vinsobres is an appellation for the red wines of the parish of Vinsobres, in the southern half of France's Rhone Valley wine region. Located about 19 miles (30km) north-east of the town of Orange, Vinsobres is clustered together with several other key wine-producing villages.
(© Christophe Grilhé)
The climate here is of Mediterranean type, with hot, dry summers bringing excellent ripening potential to the Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre grapes that make up the majority of the appellation's rich, full-bodied red wines. Mourvedre requires a particularly hot, dry climate to ripen completely and it flourishes in the intense, long-lasting sunshine that bakes the slopes around Vinsobres in the summer. Mourvedre is rarely grown north of Montelimar – the town that marks the theoretical boundary between the cooler northern Rhone and the hotter, drier south of the region. Syrah, by contrast, is at its best in the coolest of the Rhone's mesoclimates, as it is more susceptible to heat damage. The vineyards of Vinsobres are protected from the cold mistral wind and other alpine influences by the presence of the foothills to the east.
High-quality vineyards surround Vinsobres, running for nearly six miles (10km) on the south-east-facing limestone slopes that mark the beginning of the Alpine foothills. These slopes climb to 1650ft (500m), peaking at the summit of a limestone ridge that stretches from Venterol to the wine-producing village of Visan. The soils here are rocky and rich in limestone, but there are also patches of sandy soil. Lower down, in the west of the parish, rocky alluvial soils are found on the flatter plateau.
Vinsobres was classified as a named village under the Cotes du Rhone Villages appellation in 1967. In late 2005, its red wines were granted full appellation status as AOC Vinsobres. Since then, the village's whites and rosés have been sold under the generic Cotes du Rhone title.
