Provence's windy city

AVIGNON, France -- In the south of France, they say the wind "eats mud," and for that reason alone, the people of Avignon mute their complaints about the mistral, the wind so strong that it's known as "the master." In spring and fall, it blows from the north in three-day intervals, giving the city its Provenal nickname, "Avenie ventosa," or "windy Avignon." As the cool, dry wind sweeps through the vineyards of the southern Rhone valley, it scours the vines of fungi, mold, and tiny insects.

I blew into Avignon from the north myself, but on a high-speed train. Like many a traveler over the last six centuries, those windblown vines were calling me. This ancient walled city perched high above the Rhone River is the de facto capital of the southern half of France's Ctes-du-Rhne wine region. The nearby village, Chteauneuf-du-Pape (literally, "the new mansion of the pope"), is the source of the region's most glorious wine.

Chteauneuf-du-Pape is also a reminder of Avignon's brief era on the world stage. In 1309, Pope Clement V (the former bishop of Bordeaux) moved the papal residence to the city to escape vicious public opinion in Rome, and for the next seven decades, the Roman Catholic Church was headquartered in Avignon. When the papacy returned to the Vatican, it left behind a daunting architectural legacy that still dominates central Avignon and attracts pilgrims from around the world.

The Palais des Papes is one of the city's two UNESCO World Heritage sites. The imposing exterior -- a gaunt Gothic fortress joined to a graceful Gothic residence -- has a spare majesty that I had expected would be echoed by sumptuous decor and pomp in the rooms. But the years have been unkind to the Palace of the Popes. Ceded to the French government at the end of the 18th century, the structure served as a prison and military barracks from 1810 until 1906. As a guide led my group through 25 rooms, she spoke repeatedly of the luxurious paintings, furniture, tapestries, and other accoutrements enjoyed by princes of the church, long since stripped away.

While my imagination could not rise to hers -- mostly, I pictured soldiers chipping frescoes off the wall to sell the shards to collectors -- I detected traces of past glories in statuary too embedded in the stone walls to be removed, and in the sheer engineering grandeur of the architecture.

There's a timelessness to the "Rocher des Doms" -- "rock of the lords" -- that rises behind the cathedral uphill from the palace. This rocky outcrop was glorious before there ever was a pope. Indeed, as the highest point above the Rhone where the river splits into two arms, it has been a strategic aerie ever since the Celts and Greeks squabbled over the territory. During the papal era, the bluff was the private preserve of cardinals and bishops. Now its grounds have been transformed into a lush public park, crisscrossed with walkways and sculpted with small garden surprises, like a little pond and grotto where swans paddle back and forth and snap at too-curious children.

The walkway along the edge of the precipice is enough to restore even a dour cleric's spirits. About 30 yards below, a small shelf of land cut into the stone is planted in wine grapes -- the popes' own vineyard, still productive after all these years. Below the vineyard, Avignon's other UNESCO site, the Pont St. Bnzet, stretches halfway across the Rhone to an island in the middle of the river. Legend says the bridge was constructed in the 12th century by a shepherd boy who was promptly canonized when he died.

Eighteen of the bridge's original 22 arches have been destroyed by floods or warfare, and in 1680, city engineers gave up trying to repair the bridge.

Miraculously, the remaining arches have survived, and many a pilgrim pays an entry fee to walk out on the structure and re-enact the old nursery rhyme about "dancing on the bridge at Avignon."

The alternately bawdy and ascetic Petrarch (1304-74), the poet-scholar who helped launch the Renaissance, lived and worked in Avignon for many years during the papal residency, though there are no statues to honor his memory. He fell in love with a married woman whom he addressed as "Laura" in some of the first European love poetry to go beyond the clichs of the troubadours. Even as he penned those lovely verses in Italian, he wrote searing Latin prose that denounced the city as a cesspool of vice and corruption.

Gluttony was the only deadly sin that endangered my soul in Avignon. Pastry shops were my undoing in the early morning, and I often found myself ordering more food than I needed just to hold my outdoor table on the Place de l'Horloge, the main square by the theater and City Hall. As I prowled the markets, I coveted a kitchen of my own.

In fact, I found something even better when I enrolled in a class at Le Marmiton, a cooking school attached to the luxury hotel and restaurant La Mirande. The hotel, in a 14th-century cardinal's palace, was too rich for my blood, but the class cost little more than a great meal at the restaurant. Nine of us gathered in the 19th-century kitchen, a dream of slate and wood countertops, huge wood-burning stove, and porcelain sinks big enough to bathe a small elephant. Chef Jrme Verrier spoke just a little English, and his interpreter mostly gestured. But kitchen work is more a matter of muscle learning and taste memory than words. I learned to make salty dough to cook an entire five-kilo dorado (or dolphin); to saute, layer, and press a vegetable terrine; and to prepare a basil-infused strawberry "soup" and homemade lemon sorbet to round out the meal.

When the golden fish came out of the oven, Verrier slid a very large knife into the bread and opened the casing. As he peeled back the bread, skin separated perfectly from the fish's flesh. We oohed, we aahed -- and then we sat down to sup on what we'd made. Fortunately, we did not have to prepare the wines, which included both white and red Ctes-du-Rhnes, a Beaumes-de-Venise muscat for dessert, and a final sip of a local pear liqueur with coffee.

The best source of information about the wines of the region is the Boutellerie du Palais des Papes, a huge wine store and information center at the palace. On request, the clerks will set up comparative tastings on the spot, provide maps of the vineyards and wineries of Ctes-du-Rhne, and even call ahead to arrange an appointment if you have an interest in a particular producer. The center's educational displays can be almost as overwhelming as the historical litany the palace guides recite. Some 23 grape varieties are grown in Ctes-du-Rhne by nearly 300 producers.

In an age of scientific winemaking, facilities tend to look almost alike. The romance is in the fields, or sometimes in the cellars. For sheer elegance, both in the wines and the estate where they are grown, it's hard to beat Chteau La Nerthe. Praised for its wines since the 16th century, this 222-acre estate on the east side of Chteauneuf-du-Pape stayed in the same family for 250 years, only to pass through 17 owners between World War II and 1985. The current owners have reestablished La Nerthe as a leader among Chteauneuf-du-Pape producers, following the trend toward more lightly oaked red wines ready to drink within three years of bottling. A full tasting is offered free daily, and, in theory, the rest of the buildings are not open to the public. But if a wine professional happens to stop by (a surprisingly likely occurrence), a tour of the manor house and cellars may follow.

Chteauneuf-du-Pape is a big, complex wine made from a blend of 13 approved grape varieties, all of which must be harvested by hand. The wine is full of heady aromas and packs a substantial punch of hot-weather alcohol. In a sense, it is the perfect analog to Avignon, where the small things, like the painted wooden figures that mark the hours in the central clock tower, provide a charm and subtle complexity that even the Palace of the Popes cannot overwhelm.

David Lyon's home kitchen is in Cambridge.