Five thousand feet up in the Swiss Alps, from the tongue of a glacier flows an ice-cold stream. This infant river is the Rhône, and before it lies a journey of more than five hundred miles to the Mediterranean. After cascading to the floor of the Swiss Valais, and nurtured by the waters of many mountain tributaries, the Rhône enters the huge basin of Lake Leman where it rests before becoming once more a river as it outflows at Geneva. It then crosses into France where it gives its name to the "Rhône-Alpes" region and at Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, thirty miles west of Geneva, the Rhône takes a sudden sweeping turn to the south.
Between Savoie and Lyon (the capital city of the Rhône-Alpes region, second only to Paris in size, population and dynamic economy) the Rhône meanders through tamer landscapes until, powered up by the Saône, it becomes the serious river to reach the final stretch known as the Côtes du Rhône. The river, now wide and strong, pulls all the attention southward, where the sky, for the first time, anticipates the heat of southern France.
This river may lack the sweep of the Danube or the wayward twists of the Rhine, but without it Europe would be only half the fun. The Rhône Valley allowed the Romans to penetrate the heart of the Continent, and so permanently acquaint the dour north with licentious Mediterranean habits. The Rhône is also the alimentary canal of France, figuratively and actually.
