The mistral comes down the Rhône valley in autumn like it has somewhere to be, flattening the cypress trees and scouring the sky to a hard, cloudless blue. Out on the plateau above Avignon the ground is covered in pebbles the size of fists, pale and smooth, soaking up what warmth the day gives and handing it back after dark. It is a strange, almost lunar place to grow anything. What it grows is one of the warmest, most generous red wines in France, a wine with a pope's name and a furnace at its centre. On a cold night there is very little better.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is one of those names that sounds more expensive than it needs to be. People say it in a hushed, special-occasion voice, as though it belonged behind glass. Some of it does. Most of it is simply very good southern red made for the table, and the season it was made for is this one. Here is the plain version: what Châteauneuf-du-Pape actually is, how the southern Rhône is put together, how to drink it, and where the real value hides.

A wine with a pope's name

The name does the heavy lifting, so start there. In the fourteenth century the papacy decamped from Rome to Avignon, and the popes who held court there wanted a country retreat within reach of the city. They built one on a rise a few miles north, and the village that grew up around the castle took the grand title of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the pope's new castle. The château is a ruin now, a broken tooth of stone on the hill with one of the best views in the Rhône. The vines went in around it and never left.

What matters for the wine is less the history than the geography it points to. This is the southern Rhône, where the river has widened and warmed and the cool, peppery Syrah of the north gives way to something rounder and sunnier. The dominant grape here is Grenache, and Grenache in a warm place makes wine of real flesh: ripe strawberry and raspberry, dried herbs, a dusting of pepper, a warmth like a garrigue hillside in the afternoon. It is a wine that tastes as though it has been sitting in the sun, because it has.

Thirteen grapes and a field of stones

Châteauneuf has a party trick that every wine list loves to mention. The appellation rules permit thirteen different grape varieties in the blend, which by the traditional count means Grenache leading the way, Syrah and Mourvèdre adding colour, spice and backbone, and a supporting cast of lesser-known players filling in the corners. Few growers use all thirteen. The point is not the full house but the freedom: a vigneron here can build a wine the way a cook builds a stew, reaching for whatever the vintage needs.

Then there are the stones. Many of the best vineyards are carpeted in galets roulés, big rounded pebbles rolled smooth by an ancient course of the Rhône. They store the day's heat and give it back through the cold nights, nudging the grapes to full ripeness. They also look magnificent, which does no harm on a label. Add the mistral, the dry northern wind that keeps the vines healthy and the fruit clean, and you have a recipe for power. Châteauneuf carries more natural warmth than almost any red in France. Handled well, that warmth reads as generosity rather than weight.

The southern Rhône ladder

Here is the part that saves you money. Châteauneuf sits at the top of a ladder, and every rung below it is made from the same grapes, in the same corner of France, often by the same hands. At the broad base is Côtes-du-Rhône, the workhorse red that can be plain or, in the right hands, quietly brilliant. A step up is Côtes-du-Rhône Villages, and then the named cru villages: Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Rasteau, each with its own character and a price well below the famous neighbour.

The sharpest illustration sits inside a single estate. Le Clos du Caillou owns the most famous planning dispute in the Rhône. When the Châteauneuf boundary was surveyed in the 1930s, the owner would not let the inspectors cross his land, and his finest vines were left outside the appellation by an accident of stubbornness. The result is a wine grown on Châteauneuf soil and sold under a humbler Côtes-du-Rhône label, and alongside it the estate makes its full Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Les Quartz, named for the quartz stones in its soil. Taste them within a week of each other and the whole ladder makes sense in a single evening. And if even the lower rungs feel like a stretch, the same southern-French idea turns up cheaper still in the Languedoc, where a bottle like this organic Corbières delivers the warmth and the garrigue for the price of a good lunch.

Those two bottles are the whole story in miniature: one estate, one set of hands, two sides of the same boundary line. Open the Côtes-du-Rhône on a Tuesday and save the Châteauneuf for when someone you like comes to dinner, and you will learn more about the southern Rhône than any map could teach you.

How to drink it

The old instinct with a serious red is to hide it in the cellar for a decade. Resist it. A great deal of Châteauneuf, and almost all of the Côtes-du-Rhône beneath it, is built to drink young, while the fruit is loud and the herbs are fresh. The grander bottles will reward a few years if you have the patience, but you are not committing a crime by opening one now.

Give it room. These are big wines, and they open up with air, so a young bottle is all the better for an hour in a decanter, or simply a large glass and a little patience. Serve it cooler than a warm room, somewhere around seventeen or eighteen degrees. Too warm and the alcohol struts about; too cold and the fruit sulks. A short rest in a cool hallway does the job nicely.

At the table

Châteauneuf was built for the food this season does best. Think of a slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, a daube of beef, a cassoulet thick with sausage and duck, or the game that starts appearing on menus now: venison, partridge, a pigeon roasted pink. The wine's sweet fruit and warm spice meet the richness head on, and the dryness underneath keeps everything honest. It is a Sunday-lunch wine, a bonfire-night wine, a wine for the first evening you admit the heating is going on. Hard cheese loves it too, so there is no rush to put the bottle away once the plates are cleared.

If the southern Rhône has you thinking about cold-weather reds, you are in good company. Our guide to what wine goes with game covers the autumn table in full, while Barolo waits at the other end of Europe for truffle season. And when the roast comes out on Sunday, our take on what to pour with a Sunday roast has you covered.

The mistral will keep coming down the valley all winter, and the pebbles on the plateau will keep doing their quiet work in the dark. Châteauneuf-du-Pape is not a wine to be frightened of, or saved for some imagined perfect occasion. It is sunshine the south put away in summer and kept for exactly this: a cold night, a good dinner, and no particular reason beyond the pleasure of it. Pour it a little cool, give it some air, and let the warmth out.