Vines reached Provence around 600 BC, carried ashore by Greek settlers at Massalia — making these the oldest cultivated vineyards in France. What the Phocaeans planted, Rome industrialised. Amphorae stamped in the Var travelled the length of the empire, and the terraced schist of Bandol and the limestone of the Sainte-Victoire foothills were already understood as distinct terroirs. Monastic orders kept the practice alive through the medieval centuries; the Cistercians of Le Thoronet pressed wine within sight of their abbey. The Côtes de Provence appellation was formalised in 1977, though its boundaries trace older logic — the reach of the mistral, the line where garrigue gives way to workable soil. A provence wine tasting from nice therefore crosses roughly 2,600 years of continuous viticulture in under an hour of driving. The region's modern identity is narrower and more deliberate. Roughly nine in ten bottles produced here are rosé, pressed pale by direct pressing rather than long maceration, and Provence now accounts for the largest share of France's rosé output. The grapes are a Mediterranean quintet: Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Tibouren. Tibouren in particular is close to endemic, a thin-skinned variety that struggles anywhere else. Estates range from cooperative cellars handling fruit from dozens of growers to single-domaine properties of twenty hectares, several of them attached to châteaux with foundations older than the vines around them. Architecture follows function. The classic Provençal cave is built into a slope, its northern wall banked with earth so that fermentation temperatures hold steady without refrigeration. Vaulted stone ceilings, oak foudres of 30 to 50 hectolitres, and floors pitched toward a central drain are standard. Above ground, the bastide form dominates: shallow-pitched roofs in Roman tile, shuttered façades in ochre lime render, an avenue of plane trees planted for shade. Many properties on a Côtes de Provence vineyard tour from Nice combine both eras — a nineteenth-century press house still standing beside stainless steel tanks installed in the last decade. The landscape itself is the collection. Rows run east to west across pale calcareous soil, interrupted by cypress windbreaks and stands of cork oak. Lavender and rosemary grow wild along the headlands, and their oils are frequently cited in tasting notes for the region's whites. For visitors, provence wine tasting from nice tickets open a working agricultural landscape rather than a museum — cellars that operate on a harvest calendar, with pruning in January and picking crews arriving in late August.