The Rhône Valley in France is overwhelmingly devoted to red wine production.
While the Rhône River is dotted with vineyards from its headwaters in Switzerland to its mouth on the French Mediterranean coast, the Rhône Valley properly refers to two clusters of appellations along the banks of the river in Southern France. The Northern Rhône, or Rhône septentrionale, occupies a narrow band of vineyards hugging the river just south of Beaujolais, from Vienne to Valence. The vineyards of the Southern Rhône, or Rhône méridionale, funnel outward south of Montélimar toward Avignon, near the river’s Mediterranean basin. While these two separate stretches are often considered collectively, the Northern and Southern Rhône are climatically and viticulturally distinct.
The Rhône Valley and its environs boast a long history of enological importance. The introduction of winemaking in France can be traced to the Greeks, who established vine cultivation at their Massalia settlement—modern-day Marseilles—in approximately 600 BCE. At the height of Greek trade, some 10 million liters of wine in amphorae were shipped through Massalia into the heart of Gaul via the Rhône River. The Romans continued this trend with their arrival in the Southern Rhône in 125 BCE, and viticulture spread to the Northern Rhône by the first century CE. The Northern Rhône’s picturesque, hallmark terraces were first constructed by Roman workers. Vienne evolved as an important Roman provincial capital, and the Viennese vinum picatum, or "pitched wine," was exported to Rome itself. Whether vinum picatum was simply a reference to the wine’s character resulting from its mode of transport
The section on producers of Provence includes the following text: ‘Domaine de Triennes—the most noteworthy producer in Coteaux Varois—chooses to release wines as Vin de Pays.’ As with many other producers (and as noted in the GuildSomm Expert Guide to Wine Law), Domaine de Triennes now bottles their wines as IGP in lieu of using the traditional term of Vin de Pays (at least on all the bottles I’ve encountered). It’s been my observation that IGP has become so common on labels and Vin de Pays so infrequent that it would be appropriate to update the language here (for example, also in the section on the Languedoc-Roussillon) to use IGP in lieu of Vin de Pays, except for those cases where it is being used in a historical sense and IGP would be anachronistic. My two centimes.