Les Vignobles de France // Vins de Roussillion Midi Provence

This is a giclée print reproduction of a marvelous promotional travel poster from 1954. It was part of a series of maps commissioned by the Comite National de Propagande en Faveur du Vin to celebrate and promote the legendary wine regions of France. French artist, illustrator and print maker, Remy Hetreau took on this task, creating some magnificent posters highlighting local wineries of eight different regions.

The title is contained in a ribbon cartouche at the top of the map. Here Hetreau presents a scroll background on which are positioned a young man and woman holding a map of the Languedoc-Roussillion province in southern France that is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. Grape vines nearly surround the entire map, of which barrels from the towns of Montpellier, Nimes, and Beziers are suspended. At the bottom, an anchor is wrapped in a long ribbon featuring the port towns of Sete, Narbonne, and Perpignan.

Languedoc-Roussillon wine comes from the region of France that spans the Mediterranean coastline from border with Spain to the region of Provence. With over 700,000 acres devoted to vineyards, it is the single biggest wine-producing region in the world, being responsible for more than a third of France's total wine production.