Few words have the power to evoke images of a place the way Provence does. It conjures images of vivid lavender fields, cobalt-blue skies, medieval hilltop villages washed in sunshine, and of course, the cuisine—plates of olives, bouillabaisse, and fresh fish, all washed down with chilled rosé.
 
The only memory you wouldn’t want to take home with you is the one of that rosé. While much of France is known for its fine wine, Provence’s local product, until recently at least, had a less-than-stellar reputation, and that’s putting it kindly.

Ever since the Greeks introduced wine to Provence more than 2,000 years ago, residents of the region have treated the beverage as just another agricultural commodity, produced in large quantities as cheaply as possible. They’ve ended up with a little tart white, some tannic red, and vast quantities of rosé. Most of the latter was thin and anemic, to be drunk very cold by visitors from chillier climes and promptly forgotten when they returned from les vacances.

But in the past several years, the wine world has changed; with customers becoming increasingly sophisticated, fewer people want to consume rough peasant drink anymore. As a result, Provence’s wine industry is shifting at breakneck speed—at least by the standards of the conservative French countryside.

People from outside the region are, for the most part, the driving force behind this transformation in winemaking. Well educated, well funded, and extremely conscious of the global wine market, the new arrivals couldn’t be more different from the old-time farmers Peter Mayle wrote about in A Year in Provence, the ones who sold their grapes to the local co-op in September to put money in their pockets for Christmas.

Gilles Pons and his wife, Pascale Massenot, exemplify the new breed of Provençal winemaker. In the ’90s they sold their graphic-design business in Paris, and after a stint at agricultural school, purchased the land that is now Château les Valentines. Their winery is state-of-the-art (think gleaming, stainless-steel, computer-controlled fermenting tanks), but the vines are old, in some cases very old, and this contrast lies at the heart of Provence’s wine revolution.

Old vines pose a problem if you are making wine in bulk because they deliver low yields, but they are a treasure trove for producers focused on quality, because the few, very small grapes they produce contain intensely flavored juice. The former owners of Les Valentines sold their fruit to the local co-op and bemoaned their poor returns, but Pons and Massenot are using the best modern winemaking techniques to turn these same grapes into wines with a depth and complexity that would have been unfathomable before.

Provence has never had a tradition of making fine wine and therefore is not bound by the rigid rules that restrict winemaking in other parts of France, like Burgundy and Bordeaux. (In those regions, rules govern what kinds of grapes winemakers can grow, where they can grow them, and countless other aspects of viticulture.) This freedom leads to a New World-like feeling of excitement and experimentation as the winemakers compete to sell their wines not just to the summer tourists, but also in the restaurants of Paris, London, and New York.

“We are totally free to do what we want,” Massenot says over lunch at the Restaurant de l’Estagnol, just a few yards off the beach between the towns of Hyéres and Le Lavandou. “We grow 11 different types of grapes. This is typical of Provence, so there is an almost endless combination of blends available. Every year we try something new,” Pons adds.

The growth in exports speaks to their success. From 1995 to 2006, exports of Provençal wines to the U.S. rose 579 percent, from 91,500 to 530,000 liters. And buyers are happy.

Roger Dagorn, master sommelier at Chanterelle in New York, says that he’s seeing wines that come from lower-yield grapevines planted on hillsides rather than on flatlands. The resulting wines, Dagorn says, are more concentrated and, because they’re aged in new oak, they’re also more structured. “They still maintain a balance despite being from a hot climate; it’s better winemaking techniques,” Dagorn says. “The wines are kind of exciting, particularly the reds.”

Even though rosé has always been at the heart of Provençal winemaking, consistently representing almost 80 percent of production, new producers are putting more effort into reds. Until now, quality Provençal red was limited to Bandol, a small appellation overlooking the Mediterranean Sea between Toulon and Marseille and separate from the much larger Côtes de Provence appellation. Because of their long-standing reputation for quality, Bandols can be expensive: $30, $50, even $70 a bottle. But now, thanks to châteaus like Les Valentines, there are dozens of Provençal-red-wine selections at far more reasonable prices. Red wine represents 30 percent of Les Valentines’ production, compared with 15 percent for the region.

Alain Combard is another outsider who’s changing winemaking in Provence. In 1991, at the age of 47, he sold his share of producer Domaine Laroche in Chablis, bought 173 acres of land in Provence, and planned to semi-retire there. But the wine bug bit him, and now 118 of those acres are planted and he produces 850,000 bottles per year, including the Domaine Saint André de Figuière Vielles Vignes Rouge 2005, priced at $20.

For Combard, like many before him, an attraction of Provence is the lifestyle it offers: “The appealing thing about making wine in Provence is the region itself, which is gorgeous and has a unique art de vivre à la Provençale”—a hard-to-translate term that describes the special quality of life in Provence.

Combard also raves about making wine in Provence. “We have everything to make very specific wines: the sea influence with mistral often blowing, a soil composed of schists, some great varietals that are unique to our region—mourvèdre, used for reds and rosé wines, and rolle and vermentino, used on white wines,” he says. Combard also notes changes in the region’s wine since his arrival. “Quality-wise, Provençal wines have tremendously expanded due to large investments in winemaking technology.”

Combard, Pons, and Massenot are just three of the dozen or so innovative, ambitious winemakers in the area. On a recent visit, I tasted hundreds of wines, many of them at the Maison des Vins Côtes de Provence visitors center in Les Arcs. Some of them were fantastic, some of them passable, but I encountered not a bad one in the lot. True, there were a few experiments that probably don’t warrant repeating—a couple of attempts to age rosé in oak come to mind—but this is all part of the excitement, the energy, and the verve that are transforming Provence from just another beautiful place to visit into one of the world’s great emerging wine regions.