A version of this article is published by the Financial Times. See From the flanks of Mont Ventoux for my tasting notes. Ventoux must be one of the southern French appellations that has changed the most in the last 20 years or so.
You can see the testing white-tipped cone that is Mont Ventoux from miles around and the local vignerons make much of the cooling influence of this landmark, by far the highest mountain in western Provence.
Such are the taste-able effects of climate change. The cicadas had apparently struck up their high-summer soundtrack two days before. The big difference between Ventoux and the appellations to its immediate west Gigondas and Beaumes-de-Venise is not its varied mix of soil types but climate — particularly and usefully the variation in temperature between day and night.
The local town of Carpentras, for instance, is one of the hottest of the region by day but one of the coldest at night. The harvest is much later too, well into October, so the grapes are much cooler when they are picked, and have benefited from an extended growing season.
Despite its obviously wind-derived name, Ventoux is less buffeted by the famous mistral that can sometimes plague the more open countryside of the more famous wine appellations to the west. The grapes grown are very similar. Unlike Gigondas over the beautifully jagged Dentelles de Montmirail ridge, Ventoux wines come in all three colours and the hotter summers have narrowed the range of suitable terroirs for white wine production.
