Mary Taylor / Pierre Vidal
If you could bottle all the romance of summer in the south of France—the dazzling sunlight of a Cezanne painting and the warm sea breeze blowing through hillsides of lavender and thyme—you’d wind up with something a bit like Pierre Vidal’s beautiful expression of the Costiéres de Nimes appellation. A little-known sub-region at the southernmost edge of the Rhône valley, with a history of wine production that dates back to the ancient Greeks, the region combines all the juicy friendliness of a more familiar Côtes-du-Rhône with a wild, almost rustic streak that speaks of its southerly Mediterranean origins.