French student helps with the wine harvest.

The concept is a simple one. If you're going to drink wine, you have to be able to see where it was grown.

And we are going to drink wine. We're in France.

So in a courtyard restaurant in the village of Chablis, you look up from your plat du jour, point to the vineyards on the slopes of the surrounding valley and say, "There! See over there? Fourth row from the left? That's where this wine came from."

One has to be allowed a few liberties when doing this. After all, the wine may have come from the fifth row from the left. Or even the next vineyard over. Or for that matter, you may be eating indoors -- although there is rarely any reason to do so in France in summer -- and you can't genuinely see the vineyard. Or the evening may have progressed to the point that you're on to the assiette de fromage de chevre and the sun has gone down.

But you get the idea. The vineyard your wine came from has to be within your field of vision if the conditions are appropriate.

Surprisingly enough, it's not that hard to do. In Chablis, for instance, you'd be hard pressed to drink anything other than local wine. In the cafes and the bars, there is invariably a chalkboard listing the available drinks, a carte des vins without the pretensions. You can get Chablis by the bottle, half-bottle or glass. You can get premier cru or grand cru. But unless you make a special effort, you're not going to get anything other than Chablis.

And if you're in a wine-growing region, it often makes sense to ignore the wine list. Granted, if you're a vinophile and you want to explore the various vintages, you're going to make the most of what the restaurants have to offer.

But if you're merely looking for a decent wine to go with a good meal (there are not a lot of greasy spoons in France), just ask for a pitcher of the local wine.

As often as not, it will come in an earthenware jug and you certainly won't be offered a taste to see if it meets your approval. But it won't matter. It will be good -- often better than some of the lower-priced wines on the carte des vins -- and cheap.

A pichet costs in the range of seven Euros, about $12, and if it weren't good, the restaurateur wouldn't serve it.

One day, driving around the Ardeche region looking at mediaeval villages and the like, we passed the Mas d'Intras vineyard four times.

As is the case with many vineyards, even the smallest ones, you can stop in for a taste, and buy a few bottles while you're there.

Because we had other matters on our mind, we kept going, but that evening, while enjoying a lovely meal on the rear terrace of an 15th-century inn in a nearby village, we made the most of a bottle of Mas d'Intras and toasted the vineyards that we could see a few miles away.

On another day, we did stop in at a little vineyard. This one was near St. Marcel d'Ardeche, a medieval village perched on a hilltop and full of winding streets, narrow, plunging passageways, vaulted arches, crenelated walls and all the other accoutrements you'd expect to see if you were suddenly transported into the France of the Middle Ages.

A worker emptys her baskets of grapes during harvest.

We'd had lunch near the village courtyard and it was explained to us that the pitcher of wine had its beginnings less than a mile from where we sat.

The farm was in the valley at the bottom of the hill, and when we pulled in to the driveway on a quiet Saturday afternoon, it appeared that there was no one home. But moments later, out came a dog wagging its tail and right behind came the wife of the vintner.

She showed us into the building where this year's wine was evolving and pointed out the table where a few examples of recent vintages were on display. It was the Cellier du Moulas, and for 3.55 Euros, about $6, we got a lovely bottle of the 2001 vintage.

But you don't necessarily have to seek out the vineyard to buy the wine. In the town of Bourg St. Andeol, you can sit on the banks of the cote du Rhone and drink cote du Rhone. The river is fairly wide at this point, but the water is clear and fishermen in waders are often seen on the far banks.

Just behind them are the vineyards which provided the wine that we had with dinner -- Domaines Andre Aubert, Cotes du Rhone.

So the next day, we drove across the bridge to the nearby village of Donzere where M. Aubert has a small retail outlet. For 6.80 Euros, we got a bottle of his 2003 vintage, which won the 2004 Grand Prix Tulette.

The Rhone is the dividing line between the Ardeche and Provence and for a long time, the Ardeche wines were seen as decidedly inferior to their Provencal counterparts.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the Ardeche offers the only decent beer produced in France. Everywhere else in the country, you're hard pressed to get anything but Kronenbourg, one taste of which explains the French passion for wine.

But in the Ardeche, you can get Bourganel beer (la biere d'Archeche) which comes in two flavours, blueberry and chestnut. It may not sound terribly appetizing, but it is, and unless you want to drink imported beer, it's far better than anything else you'll find in France.

But in recent years, the Ardeche wines have improved. We drove into Uzes (the last duchy remaining in France) past the village of St. Maximim, and with dinner had a lovely bottle of Cuvee Racine, vin de pays Duche d'Uzes.

We couldn't actually see the vineyard, but since it's barely outside of Uzes and we saw it on the way in and on the way out, we counted it as conforming to our concept.

In France, it's a matter of so many wines, so little time.

So if you limit yourself to wines that come from vineyards you can see -- or almost see -- you can make your choices easier and do a lot less damage to your budget.

And you certainly don't miss out on any good wines.