Domaine De La Vallongue

While living in California, Ken and I had become aware of vin biologique, or organic wine. Always on the lookout for French wine bargains, we found one of our local wine shops carried an organic wine from Provence, from the Domaine de la Vallongue. It wasn't expensive, or at least we didn't think so at the time, and it was pretty good. So it was with great excitement that we searched out the winery and visited it during our 1993 trip.

The entrance to the Domaine de la Vallongue.

The place is set on the southern flank of les Alpilles, not far from les-Baux-de-Provence. We drove in and checked it out. There were no winery tours or anything like that, but the tasting and sales room was of a good size and I remember it being somewhat busy. We felt a little out of place - these were not tourists in the sales room but ordinary people buying their wine.

The winery is set at the base of les Alpilles in sunny Provence.

We also noticed something that we now take for granted in the Loire Valley : the wine was available en vrac, or in bulk. You bring in your container and they fill it up for you from the barrel. Since the winery saves the cost of bottling, corking, and labeling, they sell the wine for much less this way. We couldn't resist, and bought a 5-liter container and had it filled with one of their reds. It served us well for a few days.

Tapping our five-liter jug of red for the first time on one of our picnic lunches.

The reds and rosés are made from cinsault, counoise, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, and grenache grape varietals. They also make whites from rolle, sémillon, grenache blanc, and clairette grapes.