Sydney Riley’s Guide to Wine

The Rhône Valley has been a hub of wine culture since ancient times—and it’s just as popular today. Viticulture arrived in Southern France with the Greeks in the fourth century BCE, but it was the Romans who really established the vineyards and reputation of the area using the Rhône as their highway through France (raising more than a few glasses along the way!).

Sydney’s everyday table wine is one of the many red Côtes du Rhône appellation d’origine controlée (a form of certification), though frankly she buys whichever one of them is on sale. Cotes du Rhone wines are a delicious combination of three grapes: Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvèdre.

These fruity red wines are delicious and easy to drink right away—and that’s what, for Sydney, good wine is all about: easy-drinking, food-loving wines that are perfect for everyday consumption.

While Côtes du Rhône can come from a vast area of 140,000 acres around the southern end of the French Rhône Valley, Côtes du Rhône-Villages comes from a tightly defined area that includes 95 villages and produces more complex wines. Vineyard yields are lower, alcohol is slightly higher, and they’re excellent for aging. And then, slightly south of that is…

Châteauneuf du Pape, another of Sydney’s favorites and the region's most famous and best wines. They’re produced in a wide and diverse array of styles but share common characteristics of fresh red and black cherries, strawberry, kirsch, black pepper, black raspberry, spice, earth and garrigue, which is the fresh herb typical of the region.

So why not give one of these lovely red wines a try? They’re best enjoyed, of course, while reading one of the Sydney Riley Provincetown mysteries!