No. 003 · The Pope’s New Castle

A letter from Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Work took me to Avignon last month, and on the last afternoon I did what everyone who drinks wine eventually does there: I drove twenty minutes north, parked at the top of a small village, and walked up to a castle that isn’t really there anymore.

What stands on the hill above Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a single wall and a broken tower, gold in the evening light, with the whole southern Rhône spread out below it. It is one of the most famous ruins in the wine world. It is also the reason the wine exists at all — and the story of how it got there is better than most novels.

A PAPACY IN EXILE

In 1309, Rome was no place for a pope. The city was torn apart by feuding noble families, and the newly elected Clement V — a Frenchman — never went there. Instead, the papal court settled in Avignon, on the banks of the Rhône, and stayed for most of the fourteenth century. Seven popes in a row ruled the Church from a French river town. Petrarch, who lived nearby, hated it and called it Babylon. The popes, by most accounts, rather liked it.

They built accordingly. The Palais des Papes in Avignon is still one of the largest Gothic palaces in Europe, and walking through it you understand the ambition: this was meant to be permanent. But every court needs somewhere to go in summer, and every court needs wine.

JOHN XXII AND HIS VINEYARD

The second Avignon pope, John XXII, chose a hilltop above a village of the same name a short ride to the north. There he built a summer residence — the château neuf, the new castle — and had the slopes around it planted with vines for the papal table. For centuries the place was simply one wine village among many; it only formally took the name Châteauneuf-du-Pape in 1893. But the association stuck, and so did the vines.

Harvest below the new castle, the stones already underfoot. Illustration in the style of a medieval altarpiece.

The castle had a harder time. It was quarried for stone after the Revolution, and in August 1944, retreating German troops blew up the keep. What survives is the wall I was standing next to, which is somehow more moving than the whole thing would have been.

THE STONES

The first thing you notice in the vineyards is that there is almost no soil. The ground is covered in galets roulés — smooth, rounded stones the size of a fist, carried down from the Alps by the Rhône over millennia. They soak up the sun all day and give the heat back to the vines at night, which is why the grapes here ripen so fully and why the wines are so generous: dark fruit, warm spice, garrigue, the smell of the hillside in late summer.

Grenache does most of the work, but the rules allow a remarkable cast — thirteen grape varieties in all, red and white, blended by each grower as they see fit. It makes Châteauneuf less a recipe than a family argument, carried on vintage after vintage.

THE RULES, AND THE SAUCERS

The village has a habit of writing things down. In 1923, a local grower and lawyer, Baron Pierre Le Roy de Boiseaumarié, drew up a set of rules for what could be called Châteauneuf-du-Pape — which land, which grapes, how ripe. It became the model for France’s whole appellation system, and in 1936 Châteauneuf was among the very first wines to be recognised under it. Look at almost any bottle today and you will find the papal tiara and the crossed keys of Saint Peter pressed into the glass.

And in 1954, the mayor issued a decree that I still find hard to believe was serious: flying saucers were forbidden to fly over, land on or take off from the commune, and any that did would be impounded. As far as anyone knows, none has tried. The vineyards remain entirely free of alien traffic.

WHAT I BROUGHT HOME

I left with two bottles and a small galet in my coat pocket, which now lives on my desk in Copenhagen. If you open a Châteauneuf this autumn, open it early, pour it a little below room temperature, and give it an hour and a long dinner. It is wine made for exactly that — and for telling this story to whoever is sitting across the table.

Until next time,
Max

The GRAD Journal is a short letter on serving wine well. It arrives by email first; sign up at the foot of any page to receive the next issue.