The Road to Rosé (and Crepes)

We’d made it as far as Lyon before peeling off the A7 — that impatient ribbon of tarmac that seems determined to get everyone to the Côte d’Azur five minutes faster than is good for them. We, on the other hand, had other plans.

We pointed the car toward Gap, a quiet sort of town that sits like a hinge between the Alps and Provence, and picked up the Route Napoléon — a road that doesn’t just meander; it marches. Quite literally, in fact. Back in 1815, Napoleon took this same route from Golfe-Juan to Grenoble, leading his troops north after escaping exile on Elba. No sat-nav, no air-con, just grit, ambition, and a remarkable knack for uphill persuasion.

Today, it’s a winding, cinematic drive through pine forests and over mountain passes, with the occasional eagle overhead and nowhere particularly urgent to be. And that suited us perfectly. We had an appointment further south in the Var, with a winemaker near Pierrefeu, and a bottle (or three) of rosé waiting to be opened.

The domaine sat low and unassuming, its cellar doors flung open to let the heat out and the dog wander in. The winemaker — a wiry, soft-spoken man in his fifties — greeted us with a grin and a glass of something beautifully pale and slightly wild. He told us he was particularly fond of “les cépages oubliés” — the forgotten grapes — and much of his small vineyard was planted with them. One in particular stood out: Calitor, a near-forgotten red variety once common in Provence, long since cast aside in favour of more fashionable grapes. “It’s not showy,” he said, “but it gives elegance and length, if you let it speak.” We did — and it did.

That night we landed in Collobrières, a place that smells faintly of trees and time. It’s the chestnut capital of Provence — which we discovered when everything we ordered came with a side of marron in some form or other. Cake, paste, liqueur. If they could’ve slipped it into the wine, they probably would have.

Our hotel straddled a narrow river, and we ate dinner outside — fresh fish grilled over an old oil drum, the scent of woodsmoke and thyme carried up on the night air. Somewhere below us, a choir of toads started up, punctuated by the occasional yelp from a local band attempting Radiohead’s Creep — which, thanks to an endearingly French pronunciation, came out more like Crepes.

We chose a bottle of Chablis to go with the fish — not remotely local, admittedly, but bright and mineral and absolutely the right call. Sometimes it’s not about matching the postcode, it’s about matching the mood.

It was one of those moments that makes you glad you left the motorway. The kind of evening you couldn’t plan, and probably couldn’t recreate either. A little ragged, a little magical, and full of flavour — much like the wines we’d come all that way to taste.

Sometimes the long way round really is the only way worth taking.