I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, Like many wine regions that flourished during seafaring heydays, the Bandol wine region emerged alongside a port town that shipped its wines.

Wines from the region have been famous since Roman times, an official decree is to place

controls on the wine production in an effort to control quality

can be traced back to at least the 13th century. But Bandola and the surrounding

area have a much deeper history. Some of the first humans in Europe

had encampments here that date back hundreds of thousands of years. Pottery

remains show that Greek traders had been visiting since the 7th century

BC and since then Romans and later the Catalan dynasty ruled the area. In the 1300s the Papacy moved nearby. The region was

struck hard by the Black Plague and political unrest among the local rulers

led to all sorts of drama. Much later tensions

from the French Revolution erupted in the area and more recently the region was

politically divided during the World Wars with an especially heinous chapter that lasted until the Nazis

were ousted from the area in 1944.

Things changed in the region as people approached World War II reconstruction.

In 1970, a major highway from Paris to Marseille opened up the way for tourists to visit.

And this has dramatically transformed the economics of the region.

You don't get so much of this in the Bandole area, but nonetheless, the increase in tourism

in Provence proper has affected the Bandol economy and provided a ready market

for the wines.

The current mainstay grape of Bandol, Movedra, arrived most likely sometime during the 1500s to the 1700s.

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