Explore France With These 15 Wines

France is known for some of the most celebrated wines in the world. This year, French wines swept the Best in Show category at the Decanter World Wine Awards 2022, the most prestigious wine award competition, per Wine Industry Advisor.

"DK Wines of the World" reveals that Phonecian Greek migrants planted wine grapes along France's Mediterranean coast around 600 B.C. Roman legions took wine grape vines west to Aquitaine (now Bordeaux), and north via the Rhône. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Cistercian monks in Burgundy, Champagne, and the Loire Valley became stewards of the land and the vine for centuries. The Brits developed a voracious taste for French Bordeaux when Duchess Eleanor de Aquitaine, formerly the wife of France's King Louis VII, divorced and married Henry Plantagenet — future King Henry II of England. She took Acquitaine as her dowry, ensuring a strong British-French political and trade alliance that remained in place until 1453. Due to the cold climate, the Brits could not make quality wine in England until now, per the New York Times. 

In fact, climate change's impact on wine is global. Wine producers report that climate change is wreaking havoc on viticulture in the most prominent wine regions across the globe, France included, per the New York Times. French wines we have come to know over the last few centuries are in danger of becoming obsolete. We've compiled a list of classic French wines worth trying to explore the country's vast — and ever-changing — wine tradition.

Just east of Nantes is Anjou, formally called the Duchy of Anjou, an ancient kingdom that predates a unified France. The rich agricultural region is best known for sweet wines, but produces a small quantity of dry red and rosé wines from cabernet franc and dry white wines from a grape called chenin blanc. Chenin blanc is a rare grape that can be crafted into dry or sweet wines, some still and some sparkling, because of its prominent acidity and abundant aromatics, per Wine Folly. With aroma and flavor notes of peach, yellow apple, white flowers, zesty citrus, and warm saffron or butterscotch notes, chenin blanc is delicious.

In 1130, Cisterian monks planted the original 7-acre vineyard now owned by the legendary Nicolas Joly. Coulée de Serrant is a tiny biodynamic vineyard that was prized by kings and their courts. The 2022 vintage marks the 892nd year of producing incredible wines, per Coulée de Serrant et Nicolas Joly. Les Vieux Clos is an adjacent, walled-off parcel of old chenin blanc vines produced in a classic, barrel-aged style for rich aromas and flavors. Savennières Les Vieux Clos is considered a benchmark for exceptional quality in chenin blanc from the Savennières subregion.

The Champagne region in The Marne, just east of Paris, is known for its sublime sparkling wines. It is also one of the most storied battlefields in the world, according to the book "Champagne," which reports the region has been host to major wars since the time of Attila the Hun up through both World Wars. It is ironic, then, that the region produces wines meant for celebrations of life's blissful occasions.

Champagne has an almost exclusively limestone soil substrate and bedrock, perfect for grapes, per Comité Champagne. Roman legions mined the limestone for buildings and roads, leaving miles of perfectly temperate limestone caves, called crayeres, first used by Madame Ruinart in 1820 (via History Guru) as a means for storing her champagne for aging. Soon, champagne crayeres wormed beneath the very foundation of the region and its cities, Reims and Épernay.

Frédéric Savart is something of a daring modernist in Champagne. Known as a micro-grower, Savart's focus is on purity and identity. Rather than adhering to the regional tradition of house style, Savart lets the land and season drive his wines. As a result, his wines are austere, lithe, and exceptionally terroir-driven — a rarity in the region. Savart Bulle de Rosé is a floral wine with delicate berries and Amaretti biscuit notes. Lift a glass of champagne and celebrate its most famous glorious elixir.

Britannica reveals that Burgundy is a lengthy wine region, once belonging to the Kingdom of Burgundy, in east-central France. It flanks the Saône river, which flows from northeastern France into the Rhône river to the south. The region is known for its agriculture and noted for its cuisine — in fact, the city of Lyon is considered one of the world's great food cities, according to Travel & Leisure.

The northernmost sector of Burgundy is called Chablis. In fact, Chablis is closer to Champagne than to the rest of Burgundy, per Wine Folly. Its location and high latitude give Chablis a cool climate and limestone substrate soil that grapes love, per Vins de Bourgogne. Chablis focuses on one grape: chardonnay, which is exalted from the region. Chablis chardonnay is generally unoaked and tends to be ethereal with racy acidity, and notes of tart apples, passionfruit, lime zest, and its signature flinty minerality.

One esteemed producer is Domaine Laroche, known for its austere-yet-opulent expression of chardonnay. Domaine Laroche is committed to minimally-invasive viticulture and vinification techniques resulting in gorgeous wines with clean and fresh notes of crisp fruit, chalky mineral, and fragrant white flowers. Its La Réserve de l'Obédience is a blend from several grand cru vineyards resulting in the best cuvée from the house.

The southern tip of Burgundy is home to a subregion called Beaujolais, which has a unique terroir and produces wines from gamay grapes. According to the official Beaujolais website, Beaujolais is comprised of 72 communes devoted to the best expression of the thin-skinned grape. Wine Enthusiast indicates that Cru Beaujolais gamay produces light and fruity wines with notes of violets, pomegranate, blackberry, flowers, and smoky or flinty earth. Depending on its vinification style, Beaujolais Nouveau can exhibit banana and bubble gum notes, per Wine Folly. When Beaujolais is good, it is a delicious food wine. Look for Cru Beaujolais, not Nouveau, that juicy drink that comes out each year just before Thanksgiving.

According to Domaine Richard Rottiers, the Moulin-à-Vent commune in Beaujolais was first planted with grapevines by Roman legions, owing its name to a 15th-century windmill rising from a hill with a view of Romanèche-Thorins. It is here that Domaine Richard Rottiers crafts its lush and dense wines. Look for Windmill, a wine produced from grapes sourced from nine vineyards.

The Rhône river valley stretches about 150 miles from Lyon in Burgundy to the Mediterranean Sea in the south. Its terroir and climate vary from north to south, leading to drastically different wine styles. The wines from the north are restrained with prominent acidity, elegant aromatics, and moderate flavors, while the robust wines of the south can be inky and drenched with spice and ripe fruit flavors, according to Planet Wine.

Classically, the region is dominated by the syrah and viognier grapes in the north with grenache, syrah, mourvèdre (per Planet Wine), and cinsault, carignan, roussanne, marsanne, clairette, and grenache blanc as prominent in the southern regions of the Rhône, although a broad variety of grapes are grown in the region, per Vins-Rhone.

Viognier is slowly gaining its footing around the world, according to Forbes. In France, viognier from the popular Condrieu region is an exquisite expression of the grape (via Planet Wine),  with floral notes of lilac and spice. Viognier also has peachy notes intertwined with honeysuckle, pale pink roses, and sweet citruses like tangerine or Meyer lemon and fresh tobacco spice on the finish (per Forbes), and what is not to love? Delas Frères produces a gorgeous Condrieu with viognier grapes sourced from multiple vineyards along the river valley.

Greco-Roman settlers explored the southwest coastal regions of France, blending their culture with that of the native inhabitants, evidenced by the rich archeological and historical villages, buildings, ruins, and monuments left by these people, per WineTourism. Known as Occitania, the region maintained its freedom until the Middle Ages and still maintains elements of its ancient Provençal language, per Culture Trip. These explorers planted vineyards from the Pyrenees mountains bordering Spain in the west, throughout the region. This wine region, called Languedoc-Roussillon, is massive. Within Languedoc-Roussillon, the Corbières AOC subregion stretches from the base of the Pyrenees mountains east to Narbonne. With its ruggedness and unique terroir, the region produces incredible, robust, flavorful wines from grapes like mourvèdre, carignan, cinsault, grenache, and syrah grapes, per Wine Tourism. Largely undiscovered until recently, Corbières wines are gaining traction.

One such wine producer is called La Cendrillon, or Cinderella, named for an ancient château and estate in Ornaisons, a village just outside of Narbonne. La Cendrillon is an organic and biodynamic property known for its inky and lush red wines. La Cendrillion No. 1 is the first wine produced by the heir to the estate. Crafted from old vines, the wine is rich and exudes spicy blackberry bramble, black plum, mocha, and smoky grilled meat notes.

According to Forbes, Bordeaux is the wine capital of the world and among the most influential wine regions in the world. "DK Wines of the World" explains that it is an ancient and busy port city in the heart of Aquitaine with a storied history that dates back to the Roman Empire. Vines were planted on the banks of the Garonne river and Gironde estuary by Roman settlers and became an important trading commodity under Pax Romana. Furthering Bordeaux's presence on the world stage, the marriage of Eleanor de Aquitaine to the future King Henry II of England took its wine trading to the next level, per Vins de Bordeaux. Napoleon ordered a ranking of the wine estates in Bordeaux in 1855 for the World's Fair (via Les Conseil des Grands Crus Classés). The five-tiered 1855 Classification denotes quality and price from Cru Classé (top) producers, according to Vins de Bordeaux.

Graves is a subregion known for its steely, sauvignon blanc white wines with notes of ocean grass, zesty citrus, gooseberry, saline, and smoke. Cru Classé Château Smith Lafite produces some of the region's best Graves blanc (sauvignon blanc). It boasts its own Caudalíe Vinothérapy wine spa where you can soak in and sip on some of the best wine in France, a massive luxury brand founded by a daughter of the estate, Mathilde Thomas-Cathiard, and her husband, Bertrand.