Châteauneuf-du-Pape

In ‘Lettres de mon Moulin’ Alphonse Daudet wrote of the Avignon pope who, every Sunday after vespers, sat in the sun next to his mule and uncorked a bottle of wine: ‘that excellent wine, the colour of rubies, that is called Châteauneuf-du-Pape’. The wine is now world-famous and the town of the same name probably has more ‘vente au détail/Dégustation’ signs than any other in Provence. In the Autumn there are traffic jams of flat-capped farmers hauling grapes by tractor to the presses, and the air itself is inebriating with a musty-sweet smell of freshly pressed grapes. The Mule-du-Pape restaurant stands on a corner overlooking this flow of grape traffic as it leaves the rows of vineyards on one side to pass the village fountain on the other. The restaurant started in the 1930s, first as a café and then as a country inn, serving meals cooked by the present owner’s mother. At the same time other equally industrious members of the family were setting up a nougat firm in Montélimar and a wine firm in Châteauneuf.